If you ask the question “What’s the worst that could happen?” nuclear energy evokes a pretty bad response. The thought will be a about a short term disaster. The result of using oil for energy has been pretty bad, but people don’t tend to fear long term consequences as much as the immediate effects. I would say those who fear our ability to maintain safety and security at nuclear power plants are being rational, while at the same time those who don’t fear the continued use of oil for power are being irrationally unfearful.
So it’s sort of as if a bunch of fuel rods got dumped into the sea, rather than like a Chernobyl or Fukushima melt-down? Low-level contam, but not a “hot spot?”
Thank you! Ignorance is not bliss!
So a piece or iron rusting away slowly is “the same” as a thermite fire, because only the rate of energy released is different.
Tell ya what: you hold the thermite reaction in your hand, and I’ll hold the rusting iron in mine.
And you don’t know anything about physics. Both processes use the exact same fission process to generate energy. The only difference is the control of the speed. Nuclear power reactors can and do engage in runaway and uncontrolled fission and that is a meltdown. A bomb is also controlled to happen all in an instant. If that goes wrong, and it can, it will meltdown and be really ugly. Not as bad as an explosion, but really ugly and with more long term consequences.
Your failure to understand the basics of nuclear fission, while pretending to, makes me question your judgment. I don’t think you have the slightest clue what you are talking about.
**But in the interests of exploring your point of view further, please explain why, other than speed of the reaction, this is a different physical phenomenon. **
:rolleyes:
There must be a fire sale on straw and red herrings today.
Understanding that the phenomenons are related does not undermine the point that you are employing a fallacy to press on your FUD.
This is like declaring that all uses of nitroglycerine are evil because is used on TNT/bombs, but that point is really dumb when one takes into account their uses in mining and in lower quantities, as medicine for heart conditions. To drive the point, in this case it would be like if you are telling us that a doctor recommending the continuing use of nitro in medicine should be ignored because he also condemned the use of it in the military.
Or declaring that others are ignorants for not knowing that there are the same stuff. Well, duh, it is the same stuff; but that is not the point that I’m making, nor the point that you are avoiding.
Enough with the analogies, let’s get to the scientific facts: **please explain why, other than speed of the reaction, this is a different physical phenomenon. **
I believe you can’t explain because you don’t know what the similarities and differences are. I know exactly what the similarities and differences are. I know that a bomb like Little Boy will release about 15 percent of its energy at once and is used as a weapon and has a small fraction of the energy potential of a modern power reactor. I know that a power reactor when properly maintained and run correctly will far more efficiently use all the fuel available to it, and will not have a bomb like explosion under any circumstances, but left unattended will melt down and release a huge fraction of its potential energy and leave a huge area of land uninhabitable by people. I cite Chernobyl and Fukashima as examples of this. It is far safer to live in Hiroshima or Nagasaki, even immediately after the bombs dropped, than anywhere near Chernobyl or Fukashima.
:rolleyes:
Doubling down on the straw and the herring I see.
The context would tell you that that is not the point me and many others are not making, the problem is your FUD of not recognizing that there is a difference on how the same reaction/stuff is used in other contexts.
And that Jimmy Carter is not shying away of supporting nuclear energy even after Chernobyl.
BTW, the analogy is valid still, the Dr. in that analogy that still recommends the use of the stuff for energy purposes is Jimmy Carter.
**
The very same one that you declared to rely on regarding if we should use nuclear energy.**
Sucks then that you brought him into the discussion.
Sure. Easy. One destroys cities, the other powers them.
They are not related, it is the exact same reaction. I see you are still unwilling to try to explain to people why nuclear fission in a bomb is different than nuclear fission in a reactor other than the time it takes and the amount of fuel. That is because it isn’t different other than the time and amount. You seem to have zero conception of how many hundreds, if not thousands of times more fuel a reactor has. You seem to ignore that on many occasions such reactors have gone tits up. You reduce the disasters at Chernobyl and Fukashima to FUD. No, they really happened. And the dozen or so nuclear accidents that have occurred in the past will be repeated as long as there are nuclear reactors.
Go on, explain the different contexts and dangers and different laws of physics.
Since you are into analogies, I’ll make one. Mother nature can create flash floods (and nuclear reactors, google Oklo). Mother nature does flash floods all the time. The dozen or so at Oklo are the only ones known on earth, but it is safe to say under the same circumstances it could happen on trillions of other planets.
Humankind can prevent river floods by the construction of a dam. The Yangtze river is just such a river that periodically floods and kills thousands. The Three Gorges Dam will in fact prevent all river flooding on the the Yangtze, assuming it was built correctly and is maintained correctly and is eventually (200 years?) taken down correctly. But if it does break, a hundred million people may die. Do dams break? Yes, indeed they do.
There is indeed much whining that nobody could have anticipated an earthquake and tsunami at Fukushima. That is a load of non-sense and after the fact propaganda.
http://thebulletin.org/fukushima-risk-and-probability-expect-unexpected-0
The Fukushima disaster was in fact foreseen and was entirely preventable, but it wasn’t prevented because it would have cost too much.
WHY FUKUSHIMA WAS PREVENTABLE - Carnegie Endowment for …
But keep on with your ad hominems. I’d say it is what you do best, but that would imply you have other abilities, which you don’t.
Suit yourself, I do know that everyone else that reads this discussion knows that you are very odd for pushing for a point that was granted, (it is still a “duh!” that does not mean what you think, but you go ahead showing all how wrong you are for assuming that I think that they are different, as I said before, they are the same stuff, but the setting or how are they used is what is an important difference, and Carter showed that he does know the score) because it is irrelevant to the fact that you are wrong regarding what Jimmy Carter thinks and that you have no sense of perspective.
When I ask you to compare and contrast I want you to do more than say they “are different” and “they are the same stuff”. Calling me odd does not help that cause, but does show you use your go to ad hominem.
You obsession with Jimmy Carter is touching, he does object to the gutting of nuclear waste handling laws. Statement from Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on Effort to Reclassify Nuclear Waste
If you can make nuclear power safe, I am all for it. However in a profit driven environment, it cannot be made safe.
I am for the future of fusion power. As in the sun is a giant fusion reactor at a safe distance and we can harvest its energy a number of ways, including photo-voltaic and wind power.
It is not an ad hominen to point out that you are wrong for pressing on a point that others were not pushing.
And in the end nothing to deny that he is against nuclear energy, indeed I also pointed before that Carter is against irresponsible handling.
It is BTW the second time you push for a point that is not against what we said before.
That is usually always 50 years into the future. In the meantime I prefer **to follow the one that you claimed to trust. **
[Bold and italics mine.]
Define safe? How safe? Measured how?
And if I showed you figures that, unit for unit, nuclear electricity is in fact far safer than photo-voltaic and wind power? If I showed you figures that demonstrated that if we had generated as much power with photo-voltaic and wind power as we do with nuclear, they would have resulted in more deaths and injuries? Would you then be willing to alter your position and embrace nuclear while condemning the use of renewables until they can be made safe?
I’d be interested. I’d never heard this. What are the principal causes of harm from solar cells and windmills?
(I notice you use a conditional grammar. Are there actually such figures?)
My position has been consistent over the past 10 years. Although I am open to changing it if persuaded with facts and logic.
Safe is that the potential for destruction is limited to those in the immediate vicinity or work in ancillary industries that can look to their own safety.
So, safe for the public. Which nuclear power is not safe for life or property of the public. Ask the people Fukushima and Chernobyl. Oh, wait, there are no people of Fukushima or Chernobyl anymore. All lost all their homes. That is an unacceptable loss. And by unacceptable, I mean I won’t accept a risk near me of that kind.
I would have accepted the risk of living on a nuclear vessel in the US Navy during the Rickover era. But I will never accept the risk of living near a fission plant that is run for profit or built by people not motivated by a zero fault doctrine of safety.
The nearest nuclear plant to me is Diablo Canyon. Which I was once a shareholder in during all of its construction and for some operation. It is a financial disaster. 10 years ago I invested in a number of German wind power manufacturers and made an 800 percent profit and sold out.
Not sure where you are getting the information about the financial disaster.
OTOH, I’m not much of a believer of just what the company says, but the study was also made with the help of other independent groups. The biggest curve ball on any economic projection though does come from the climate change issue. It would seem to me that the costs of eventually losing complete coastal cities due to ocean rise thanks to fossil fuel energy plants does make nuclear investments to be more attractive.
No idea what you’re saying here about the differences and similarities – the safety concerns of nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons are really quite different, but I was definitely a nuclear-trained and engineer-qualified submarine officer. I stood many watches as the officer in charge of the reactor and engine room, and was the division officer for multiple nuclear and engineering divisions. At one point I was the acting Chief Engineer of the submarine, while the Chief Engineer was on vacation.
Nuclear reactors utilize controlled fission to generate power. Nuclear weapons used uncontrolled (once started) fission to generate explosions and destruction. These are quite different physical phenomena, even though they use the same physical properties of matter.
Just like burning an oil lamp is a different phenomenon, with different practical and safety concerns, then burning a pile of oil-soaked rags, though they use the same physical properties of matter.
Also…they don’t use the same kind of fuel. Bombs use weapons grade fissionables, and reactors use a different grade.
It’s a little like the difference between gasoline and kerosene. One explodes; the other merely burns.
So, The Second Stone is wrong, there, too: there actually is a difference of a specific kind between a nuclear weapon and a nuclear reactors.