Well, some of us have been trying, in this very thread, to offer serious arguments about a variety of issues, including the problems of renewable energy, the safety (or otherwise) of nuclear power, and a variety of other issues related to nuclear energy and to the situation in Japan. It’s you and your Trolly McTrollerson comrade the OP who have been ignoring serious attempts at discussion and ranting like radiation-damaged hyenas. You then also went and started another Pit thread to rant like a fucking moron about…well, it’s not quite clear about what.
If you want a serious discussion of the issue, why don’t you actually set an example and start participating seriously in the ones that are already going. Or go start your own thread in GD or GQ. People will then be required to follow the rules of those forums and participate in a civil fashion, and you can show us the calm erudition and analytic rigor that you keep claiming to have, but that you have so far successfully hidden from everyone.
See how that works? I asked in a reasonable and concise way, a simple question. Rather than answering it, I see more nonsense, including some really absurd crap. It makes me think you are pulling my leg.
Hey, asshole, there’s a Search function on this board. You’re so smart, i’m sure you can work out how to use it.
This is hilarious.
You haven’t started a serious discussion, and you’ve been acting like a flaming troll in the discussions that are going on, yet the apparent absence of a serious discussion (you don’t even know, because you haven’t searched) is the fault of everyone else on this board, but not you.
We do, occasionally, have very good, sharp, intelligent debates/discussions break out in the Pit. You are one of those who has been doing their very best (and a very good best it is) to ensure that this thread hasn’t turned into a discussion.
Here’s the thing. “Quantifiable” in an academic context has a very specific meaning. It means everything can be measured with a degree of certainty. Whatever figures the company and government have, they are not releasing. They are not able to actually get into the reactor core and see what is going on to measure and evaluate it. They won’t be able to do that for a while. They don’t know if the corium is boring through the concrete, which experts assure us is impossible, but is likely to actually be happening.
The real discussion is happening here because in the “cite” forum the pro nukies are demanding that prior to raising an alarm that everyone provide official government figures and adopt the “expert” view that any kind of a meltdown is impossible and fear is not a real thing. They refuse to accept that radiation readings are now showing the spread as far as Nevada in the US or that it is anything other than a minor inconvenience for the people of Fukushima who are ejected from their homes and that the nuclear industry has a right to rain down inconsequential levels of radiation on the rest of the world without compensation.
Nowhere do they admit that they simply underfunded the design and construction of the Fukushima plant. They give us the nobody could have anticipated these events bullshit when in 1960 there was a much larger 9.5 quake and Japan has experienced much larger 120 foot tsunamis. Then they mismanaged the plant and spent years not addressing serious mismanagement problems. They don’t take radiation leaks seriously, but you can bet that they will call for the punishment of the workers and former workers who are now revealing the long term mismanagement and safety issue.
The bottom line is that in the pro-nukies view, nobody but they are entitled to have a position on the subject because of their special knowledge and Spock like lack of feelings. Of course their special knowledge does not meet reality. Notice how when it started being clear that workers were radiation burned and levels of radiation in Nevada are detected that they start walking back their big talk and some of them shut up entirely.
Science is about what is known though experiment and observation and forming testable hypothesis. Notice how they ignore Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Idaho, Windscale, Hanford and every other incident and don’t study and repeat them but distinguish them not like scientists, but like lawyers.
The fact is that we do not know everything that can go wrong with a nuclear plant, only that things will go wrong. Both of which the pro-nukies minimize. We are finding out a new way that things go wrong with this incident. But will we learn from it? Will we make coastal nuke plants able to withstand minimum 9.5 quakes and being completely submerged under tsunamis? Certainly there will be no retrofitting because that simply isn’t within the budget.
They might be examining if all the plugs for the backup generators are plugged in (or wired) and the diesel in the tanks is full.
What they aren’t doing (I’m guessing and hoping I’m wrong) is figuring out how to secure the plants against 9.5 quakes and 120 foot tsunamis and implementing that. Why am I so sure? Because making the plant secure against a 7.5 quake (like Diablo Canyon) is so freaking expensive that they cannot even contemplate planning for a quake 250 times as powerful.
[QUOTE=The Second Stone]
The real discussion is happening here because in the “cite” forum the pro nukies are demanding that prior to raising an alarm that everyone provide official government figures and adopt the “expert” view that any kind of a meltdown is impossible and fear is not a real thing. They refuse to accept that radiation readings are now showing the spread as far as Nevada in the US or that it is anything other than a minor inconvenience for the people of Fukushima who are ejected from their homes and that the nuclear industry has a right to rain down inconsequential levels of radiation on the rest of the world without compensation.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, it sucks the way folks ask you to back up your bullshit over there, right? Much better to come here because they you can spout off whatever you like without anyone asking you to cite your source.
The fact is that you are full of shit. The trouble, sadly for you, is you HAVE nothing to back your bullshit up with except fear and ignorance. If you HAD any facts to show the nuclear energy system was as dangerous as you claimed you would have trotted them out. But you don’t. Even in this disaster in Japan you have, what? A handful of workers burned? A larger number (maybe as many as a hundred) who have been exposed to higher levels or radiation and will have a higher risk of cancer down the road. Possibly an even larger number of civilians dosed with lower levels of radiation who might also have problems down the road. No workers known to have died from radiation. No civilians known to have died.
Balance that with the disaster going on right now and it’s not even a fart in the wind. Hell, balance that with the deaths due to normal operations in extracting coal in a year and it’s hardly noticeable. But you continue to refuse to understand or accept the facts, and continue to spew fear and horseshit.
I notice how you SAY these have been ignored, and I also notice that this is completely disingenuous of you to do so, considering that most if not all of those issues have been addressed. I also notice that your vague fear-mongering rant here really doesn’t put any of those ‘disasters’ in context. For instance, how many were killed or injured at TMI? How about those other ‘disasters’? If we combined them all and added up all of the dead and injured, which figure will be larger…the number of folks killed or injured every year mining coal, or the number of folks killed or injured in all of these ‘disasters’ combined?
No…the FACT is that in over 60 years of providing nuclear power there has been one instance where there was a significant loss of life and harm done. Nuclear has been unbelievably safe in it’s operations during that time frame…much safer than any other large scale power system. How many folks died building, say, the Hoover Dam? Three Gorges? How many folks die each year mining coal? How many die from the effects of coal emissions? That’s the actual fact you don’t want to debate because it makes you and those of like mind to you look like the silly, fearful idiots you are. It’s like someone who doesn’t want to fly and points to a plane crash as the reason their fears are justified. And then go on to say that, well sure, the plane hit a pocket of wind sheer and that caused it to crash, but the engineers should have known that this would happen and should have engineered more safety features into it so that it was crash proof!
You and others keep ranting about building nuclear power plants on fault zones, or subduction zones, or earthquake/tsunami zones as if this is a meaningful observation of how stupid those in the nuclear energy industry are. I mean…they build nuclear power plants on coasts where there is a 1 in 10,000 chance of a tsunami!! Here’s the thing…PEOPLE FUCKING LIVE IN THOSE AREAS! We build in those areas because that’s where people like to live you idiots! And since they want to live there…and I realize this is a difficult concept to grasp…THEY NEED POWER! So, you have to build your power plants in areas of risk because people, being people, choose to live in those areas. And when they do, occasionally there are major disasters where, yeah, the nuclear power plant in the path of a 9.0 earthquake and tsunami gets clobbered, and even with all it’s safety issues it still takes a substantial cleanup of what is no doubt a nasty toxic spill. But the thing is, all those OTHER folks living in that area got wiped out. 10’s of thousands dead or injured. The nuclear melt down is small potatoes compared to the disaster that caused it you fucking idiots! Let’s compare, ehe? A few dozen injured, a few hundred who may have problems down the road, maybe a few who will actually die (none reported yet, despite the 'worse nuclear disaster in HISTORY™!!!), compared to over 10,000 dead, 50-100k injured, and hundreds of thousands who have lost their homes, are having trouble getting adequate food, water and shelter, etc etc. Can you guys FUCKING ADD? Do you know the difference between 10,000 and 0, or 10? Between 10-50 and 50,000? Between 30,000 and 500,000? Between a couple billion (hell, say 10 billion) in cleanup from the nuclear ‘disaster’ and 100’s of billions (heck, maybe a trillion) to repair the OTHER damage from this disaster??
Yeah, I feel better getting all that off my chest. Been out of town a lot lately and just haven’t had the energy to post much, but have been following the increasingly chicken little-esque quality of this thread and the one in GD (and now I see there is another thread by FXMastermind on essentially the same subject in the Pit :rolleyes:).
Nope, that’s not what I meant. See? You didn’t even understand such a simple thing as “I remember reading it, but I can’t remember who wrote it”.
For a guy who displays very little reading comprehension and even worse writing skills, you sure are convinced you know what’s what. I’m staggered that you can come to any conclusion about anything, given how little you seem to understand.
