How many do you need? Is that the litmus? You need deaths?
I’m not at a computer I can do a search on, but look up pebble bed reactors…Der is right, we can build reactors that absolutely can’t melt down. It’s impossible.
-XT
Well…yeah. That seems a reasonable meter stick to measure by to me. We could talk about ecological impact as well if you like. What do YOU suggest as a reasonable ‘litmus’?
:rolleyes: Need?
-XT
Yes, you CAN design such beasts. At least as much as you can design a brick that cant fly. Sure, maybe some amazing set of conditions “may” arise in which said brick flys, but they are as improbable as a specific person getting struck by lighting in a specific time frame.
And these designs dont require perfect construction or control to work properly either. At least in a safety sense.
So maybe they don’t melt down…they blow up instead. Or something else goes badly wrong. My point is there are always unforeseen circumstances. Nothing is perfect.
Yeah! Nuclear power isn’t absolutely perfect! So let’s not use it! They could potentially cause some sort of harm down the road.
So instead, let’s keep the status quo which does damage as part of its normal operation.
If we had this attitude about everything we’d still be in the stone age.
Well it is more of a continuation of other long running discussions - in which some have placed nuclear power as the answer to our energy needs - and portrayed them as a technology that is able to be deployed rapidly and cost-effectively on a massive scale. The standardization inherent in this new generation of reactors was presented as key to why they would cost so much less than previous attempts. Bumping threads that old seemed poor form though …
Government contractors cut corners all the time. Read up about how many soldiers get shocked from shoddy electrical work in base facilities sometime. Design may be awesome, but some bean counter decides to use lower quality materials, and the whole equation is thrown out of whack. So you test, and re-test, etc to try to make things as safe as possible.
Then again, testers/inspectors aren’t always strictly neitral about such things either. Shit happens.
Not even in the same zip code as anything I’ve said in this thread. The only point I’m making is I don’t want to cut costs by reducing the amount of required testing. Apparently some people see that as a wildly controversial idea for some reason.
Did you not READ my post.
Some reactor designs can be constructed as poorly as possible. They may not work, they may fall apart, they may leak like hell, but they will not blow up or meltdown.
If you knew anything about engineering or nuclear science, you might understand such a nuance…
http://www.alternet.org/environment/134977/startling_revelations_about_three_mile_island_disaster_raise_doubts_over_nuke_safety/
Heres an article that says 3 Mi. Island was not contained. That there was a cover up and people got sick and died.
It is not as safe as they are trying to make you think. There are billions of dollars to be made building and running them.
Read this very slowly.
Me: Testing good. Even if it cost many shiny rocks.
That’s the entire point I’m presenting.
Of course it is. The arguments against nuclear are almost always “It has a flaw! let’s not do it!” - people always argue from the assumption that the flaws of our current methods shouldn’t be counted. Not a comparison of the pros and cons, but just “ew! nuclear! waste and stuff! Not in my back yard!”
Bahhh
I did a calculation once. Roughly speaking, every PERSON on the planet would have to have their OWN personal three mile island to add up to one chernobyl.
If you can’t do the basic math (or understand the basic science) to show where I am wrong in such a claim (which I might be), then you dont know what your talking about.
What the heck do you THINK makes nuclear expensive in the first place?
The fuel is nearly free. The rest is high paid construction workers, engineers, fancy equipment, and testing.
Nuclear has a better safety record than just about anything else, power production related or anything else for that matter…
What part of “I am not fucking arguing against nuclear power” are you having difficulty grasping?
Right. I’m not trying to blow sunshine up your skirt. The solar/wind/tidal/magic pony crowd will be along shortly to do that. For my part, I freely acknowledge that there is always a small possibility that something could go wrong and that someone may be killed.
The thing is, you have to look at the risks and weigh the possible rewards. What’s the probability of a small problem? Small but measurable. How about a major incident? Smaller, but still measurable. How about a major disaster causing a large loss of life? Very remote. What are the possible range wrt the loss of life? Take something like Chernobyl as a worst case (and HIGHLY improbable). So, say a maximum of 3k DRT, with the possibility of another 20k-100k dying prematurely over the course of the next 20 or so years (and yes, I’m pulling these figures mainly out of the air from memory…they could be off by an order of magnitude, considering how bad my memory can be). Now…compare the damage done by CO2 over that same 20 years, assuming the scientist types are right…and the loss of life due to a comparable technology like coal wrt the yearly loss of life (thousands…perhaps 10’s of thousands, counting miners, workers and those exposed to coal fired radiation, lung problems, cancer, etc).
You have to look at technology in a realistic way, and weigh the various risks carefully, without fear and with your eyes open. Looked at by nearly any metric but stark raving fear, nuclear power is a viable alternative to coal…and from a lot of perspectives it’s the best alternative we currently have that could actually be scaled up and deployed that could meet our current and future needs.
Think of it this way…say you get a golden BB and a given nuclear power plant goes fully tits up. Full bore, Chernobyl style cluster fuck. What do you have? You have a very nasty local ecological disaster that will take years, decades or even centuries to ‘fix’. Really bad. But, consider…Global Warming (or GCC) is a GLOBAL effect. We have moved from a purely local ecological disaster to one on a global scale…and the disaster is potentially worse in a number of LOCAL areas around the world than your purely local disaster from the nuke plant (if, say, New York is 15 feet under water, for instance).
See the difference?
-XT
For the umpteenth time, I don’t give a rat’s hairy ass about testing being expensive. I see it as important. Period. Amen.
Dude…they do testing…and testing…and testing…and checking and checking and checking…and inspections and inspections and inspections…out the wazoo.
THATS what makes nuclear (relatively ) expensive in the first place!
Good. Me happy. We dance for joy now. Ooga-booga.