Heh, TSS doesn’t know Der Trihs really well, does he Folks? 
I am sure the spokesmen for the Japanese nuclear plants are telling the truth. Nuke owners and operators have always been honest and above board.
Then years later we get the truth.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2011-03/14/c_13778393.htm
Why move fleet if no danger? The Navy is fear mongering!
No, it is just being prepared for the worse, and you seem to have problems with the word “imaginable”.
Slate has indeed a few words for people like you:
Nuclear Overreactors
Best of a bad lot? Likely so. I’ve been trying to adjust to nuke power because, just as is said, it may very well be unavoidable. And I must take a moment to remind you guys, once again, that if you had listened to us crazy ass moonbats forty years ago, and started plowing some serious bucks into alternative energy resources, we might not be in this mess. We didn’t, because there was no profit to be had. Oh, sure, some gestures were made, a bit of research here and there, looks good for the PR front.
And thereby hangs the tale.
We are a capitalist/consumerist nation, and that presents us with certain inherent weaknesses. Our science follows money. Just for instance, we know a whole lot about viruses that cause cancer, we are pretty thoroughly researched on that. Why? Because tobacco companies cheerfully funded such research, hoping to get out from under lung cancer. Turns out, viruses don’t cause very much cancer, but we know lots and lots about it! Yay!
There’s an inherent bias in our information. That is not the same as saying the books are cooked, or the science is faked, not at all. But if a scientists approaches these issues from a strictly non-biased viewpoint, he is a fool if he doesn’t know that one set of results will be greeted with glad cries and hosannas, and another set of results might ensure that he never gets another research grant as long as he lives. TL:DR - we don’t pay for non-biased research, we demand practical results. Results that cost us money and/or profitability are not welcome.
And how much are we willing to pay for safety? Sure, the engineers can cook up a plan with double, triple safeguards. What is the cost of implementing those safeguards, at what point will a bean-counter say “Well, really, this is going to cost us 10 percent of our profit margin, we probably don’t need it, why, Ive got research right here from Unbiased University that says the odds are a million to one against! And we know the research is good because we paid for it!”
Unbiased decisions cannot meaningfully exist where profit is a motivator.
And then there’s Catch 22, where “22” is an exponent: water. I am compelled in the direction of nuke plants largely from the threat of global warming. But nuke plants must have water. And brothers and sisters, pals and gals, the next big fight isn’t going to be about oil. Its gonna be about water. If we’re gonna build a buttload of nuke plants, well, where?
The middle of American used to be called the Great American Desert. (Take a moment to plug a history by Jonathon Raban, Badlands, helluva story, true story, grim story…) So there’s plenty of places to put nuke plants where hardly anybody lives. But the reason nobody lives there is because there’s no water. So we either build in highly populated areas, with another set of concerns, because that’s where the water is, or we find water where there is none. Maybe we could build them all in Canada? Canada has lots of water, they won’t mind. The love us to pieces up there, they’ll be happy to take on our risk. Besides, give us any shit, we raise their rent.
The only answer is the Holy Grail of Cheap, Clean Energy. The Green Goblet. But nuke power isn’t a cure, its a crutch. And sure as shit, if we get a bunch of nuke energy, we most likely will squander it just like we squandered all the others. Its what we do, we’re consumers. We consume.
Anyway, I’m trying to adjust to what appears to be the Inevitable. I was heartened by the admirable safety record. I’d have to be, I’ve been beaten about the head and shoulders with that safety record for years. “Look at France! Look at Japan! Shuttup, you Luddite moonbat, and look at France and…OK, look at France!”
You know that one of the largest nuclear plants in the US is in Arizona, in the middle of the desert? Sure, water is needed, but it is not impossible to provide it in remote places.
About the only complaint I agree with is the problem of the bean counters bottom line, and here is where one has to look at France.
The people of France are also proprietors of the nuclear plants, indeed the risk and the profits are shared by the populations closest to the nuclear plants, IMHO that does care of NIMBY, and that is actually the real reason why there is not much more nuclear development in the USA, environmentalists or the left are never enough to stop this development, it is the bottom line affecting most of the populations that live near nuclear plants that prevents development.
Besides NIMBY, it is the “what good does it do for me?” question. Getting just discounts on energy should not be enough, besides sharing the risks, the people should benefit more and I do know that this is anathema for many conservatives, but it is the government (more local than federal) that will have to take care of this and not much private enterprise in the foreseeable future.
{Hijack} I grew up in the Nevada desert, and as a Boy Scout know how to survive in it. But I got news for you, having done so I’d much rather be eating a nice fat rabbit or squirrel than a Nevada jackrabbit. I’ve heard of proposals to put the repository in Wyoming. I’ve had some tasty game from there.I mean face it, It’s got to go somewhere.{Highjack}
This thread fucking sucks.
Well I have a great deal of respect for someone like DT, who usually follows his arguments off a cliff to their logic meets the messy reality of human nature. Just yesterday I attended the memorial service for my 5th grade teacher (families are friends) at the church. And believe it or not, I thought of our beloved Der Trihs and wondered what he would think of all the resurrection stuff and that all the people there would be better off the trappings of religion. And then I looked over at my Dad, who is an athiest and thought: he comes to these things all the time and keeps his mouth shut.
But on the point of Chernobyl, I really do think that it is looking down on foreigners. They figured that if they gave the plant enough attention and appreciated the seriousness that the modest safety measures they took would be just fine. All engineering has its limits. Nothing is safe from the laws of physics. The Japanese are very safety conscious people, much more so than we are, and they are serious, duty minded people. They did the best they could. But a 9.0 quake is more than they could handle. It is entirely possible today to put in a large meta-material foundation that makes a structure “invisible” to large quakes. But just how large?
Dude, are you trying to tell us that you don’t approve of this thread and some of the people in it? Because from your posts that is less than completely clear. Please speak your mind and don’t be shy. We wouldn’t want to keep you from something that you think is more important. Like another thread. Seriously, have you had your distemper shots?
I agree with all your points which I find reasonable and un-Pit worthy. Had we simply used all the money and effort that went into fission and fusion power for solar and batteries (lead, compressed air, NMH, or something, we’d have more than enough today. But then nobody but the government would have owned it, and that isn’t the way we do things. And people would all have roofs and yards with solar and much of their own needs.
The US and our friends have spent tens of billions on fusion research over the past 40 years, and while we have achieved fusion in the labs, it has never reached a break even point, and more importantly we haven’t figured out a way to harvest that energy from those lab reactors. And fuel would be expensive to boot.
Let’s face it. If someone were to tell us that they had a working fusion reactor that had a billion years of fuel and will power the whole earth, we’d think they were nuts.
The Sun is a fusion reactor that will not within a billion years run out of fuel, is at a safe distance, needs no maintenance and can be harvested with photovoltaic cells a hell of a lot cheaper than figuring out how to harvest energy for lab fusion reactors. Science for science’s sake is worthwhile, but Cthulhu on a cracker building lots of nuclear and one day fusion plants is stupid when we can make solar cells and storage systems. Same with wind and tidal and geothermal.
You have excellent hindsight. Who doubts big business is not this very minute reaping big profits not mention millions in government grants from the so-called “alternative energy” industry today?
That’s the way it is for us moonbat luddites. Money is Lola, and whatever Lola wants, Lola gets. We have to go after it indirectly, and if that means money will make money from green, so be it. If that is the only way to get the power of money moving in the right direction.
Its like trying to teach a pig to sing, you can’t even know if its possible, and if it is, it will take damn near forever. Even harder to teach a pig to care.
Another explosion. I’m just watching a local tv channel news, and it’s all about nuclear bad, Japan plants bad, mushroom clouds over Japan, etc. Well, I guess that was to be expected.
Most engineering failures are due to accountants. The war between cost and safety is won by them. There is a constant battle about construction safety and cost. Must never cut profits .
Do not be alarmed at any of these many nuclear plant explosions. They are not atomic bomb explosions. Waves hand. “These are not the explosions you are looking for.”
That is just not true. Accountants are not engineers and do not prepare the plans. Accountants have no understanding of engineering. Engineers could refuse to prepare the plans, but they do not. They prepare them and they put their little engineer seal on them. That little seal says that it is the fault of the engineer if anything goes wrong. If I were to write a really long, boring, pedantic, humorless novel about what a grand profession engineering is, I would have an engineering project fail and then the engineer would do the honorable thing and commit sepuku just as an illustration of how honorable even incompetent engineers are. It would make my main engineer character look even better. I would be a cruel Author!
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This is rapidly moving into “worst case scenario” territory.
Getting hard to keep up. Is this the same dreadful breaking news I heard about two hours ago, or is this whole new dreadful news?
Same, this is a couple hours old.
I have dream.
Second Stone is in a dire situation. Bad things are going to happen. But, wait, somebody has engineered something else to save him from someone elses bad engineering.
But, then, it doesnt work.
Worst case? No. That would be the containers failing.
The question is, given that the containers are made of metal that has been zapped for four decades, will the metal fatigue have weakened them to the point that they fail in the event of meltdowns.