And I’m sure you’ll like the coal fired power plant next door to your house that replaces it, too. Unless you and your neighbors are going to start burning dung in your fireplaces for energy, that is.
I get tired of people getting blamed for the worlds woes for just being in business. It’s like the only ‘good’ people are the poor and retards. Anyone else is evil and trying to take advantage apparently.
Are we approaching the possibility of acknowledging that while nuclear power plants do in fact present some danger and challenges that this is a pretty unique situation in the (largely safe) history of nuclear power plants?
Some of the comments upthread are beyond reason.
The answer to this question is probably glaringly obvious to everyone but me: why do nuclear power plants need a power supply? Can’t they just provide power to themselves?
Under normal circumstances, yes. But in this case the plants were shut down following the earthquake and have stopped generating power.
:smack: I was pretty sure I was missing something simple, and so it proved.
I’m starting to feel like Yogi Berra these past couple of days, “They x-rayed my brain, and found nothing.”
Surprisingly, no, even in the case of multiple units on the same site. The reason is cost savings, really.
ETA: black-start capability requires that you have some other power generation source on-site which can supply the entire auxiliary power of the bigger unit, which ranges from the single to the dozens of MW in range. It’s certainly possible with diesel generators and/or gas turbines, but the thing which limits the use of these items is cost.
Very good question/answer format from Reddit with a nuke eng.
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/g37tl/ima_former_nuclear_emergency_planner_wanting_to/
Offered without comment.
Me? Literally me? I smoke, have for years. Appoint me Lord King Emperor can’t-be-assassinated/impeached-for-ten-years, and Ill fire up all the coal plants, and build more. It’s not like we haven’t already designed them to run many times cleaner than they used to. With gobs of money being thrown at them, the technology will regularly improve, or there will be public executions of executives and corporately funded scientists who exaggerate, and a few random politicians as a matter of course.
We’ll cut ourselves off oil imports, break OPEC’s back, spend trillions building the smartest Skynet-smart energy smart grid we can, spend more trillions subsidizing renewables, large and small scale, and we’ll keep employment home, and greatly expand it. By “home” I mean Canada, US and Mexico. No, I don’t mean we’ll invade them or something, just that if they can’t or won’t fund a compatible smart grid with us, we’ll pay for it and do it for them.
Energy in North America will be cheap, as a basic human right. We will then pwn the Earth. 
Do the Japanese leave spent fuel rods in water ponds near the [plant like we do? If so what about them?
And then in 2558, when we have long forgotten what used to reside there, a brave archaeologist and his team of explorers will enter the site and leave with a terrible sickness.
Unable to read the “nuclear contamination” sign, nor recognize the no longer in use symbols, rumors of it being a secluded cursed temple will arise.
I’d watch that movie.
It is japan. They will open up a door to Godzilla or Mothra.
Who cares? Doesn’t matter how “evolved” they might be, still fucking cockroaches!
We still talking about engineers?
Godzilla won’t come for a few years yet. He was born from radiation IIRC.
I thought he was a prehistoric monster whose powers were enabled by radiation, sort of like Peter Parker.
Godzilla got his powers by being bitten by a radioactive human?
This isn’t a coal thread. Stop peddling your dirty, dirty, dirty coal here. Engineers and their fellow travelers, accountants, are responsible for every engineering failure in history. Tacoma Narrows bridge, Hyatt Regency walkway collapse, the Ford Pinto, Cleveland East Ohio Gas Explosion, Chernobyl, every dam damn that ever failed, the Boston Molasses Disaster, the DC-10, the Hindenburg, Lake Peigneur, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig spill, Bhopal, flooding of New Orleans during Katrina, etc. etc. etc.
And let’s not forget that engineers are responsible for virtually all weapons systems and the efficiency with which they have slaughtered millions of people.
Anyway Una, try not to make this thread about your blindness to all the blood on your profession’s hands.
Engineers are an evil. A necessary one, but an evil nonetheless.
You say that like its a bad thing.
Obvious troll is obvious.
Good Cleveland reference, though. I always like a good Cleveland reference.
That’s the spirit! :dubious: