There’s only so much pseudo-populist rhetoric about “the Man” I can handle in a discussion about nuclear energy issues.
While I agree with you whole heartedly (I would, by extension, broaden this to discussions about the economy or business as well 
), out of curiosity, who was this aimed at? Or was it just a general comment? Just curious.
-XT
John DiFool and his post #178. My first instinct was to call his style “argument from ignorance”, though wikipedia suggests “Argument from personal incredulity” might be a better fit. There wasn’t anything solid to address in his statement.
“The man” is suggested by his disparaging reference to “our political and corporate leadership”.
Well, there is this Simpson fellow I’ve been hearing about…
Simpson, eh? Doesn’t ring a bell.
Intererestingly, the EU has begun to push in a big way for nuclear energy. Here is an article that popped up today. Of course, they’re worried not just about greenhouse gases, but about being cut off by the Russians.
Cage match time!
Oil tanker spill vs Train Derailment (carrying nuclear waste) in an all out brawl. Who causes more damage to the ecosystem and why?
Well our leadership has consistently shown it is incapable of handing such a project. That is
certainly a different debate altogether than discussing the purely physics-based concerns
about nukes, but if I look at other engineering projects of the last half-century Murphy’s
Law certainly came up and bit more than a few people in the ass. We have had not one
but TWO shuttles get destroyed; the first was bad enough-the second inexcusable. NASA
knew all about the institutional inertia involved in the Challenger incident, and allowed the
exact same complacency to happen again WRT Columbia. The World Trade Center towers-
I believe I read about the designer being perfectly aware that hot jet fuel (or the like) would
weaken the steel enough to cause a collapse-but they considered the possibility so remote
that they went ahead with the design anyway. Sure from a strictly local view the incidents
weren’t hugely damaging to the local areas but the point is that the designs failed utterly and
catastrophically, even tho the risks were known by a subset of those involved.
Look all I’m doing is playing Devil’s Advocate here more than anything else. Several people in
this thread have downplayed the risks involved with nukes, and looking backwards and
saying that 3MI and Chernobyl weren’t that bad, so looking forward we can’t expect to see
anything worse than that. And I call BS.
If we were to implement nukes, priority list must be as follows:
-
Take all profit concerns out of the equation-make them not for profit, so that managers and
engineers aren’t tempted to cut corners. -
Find a truly safe way to deal with the waste.
-
Ensure there’s some sort of review/inspection board which has some real teeth.
I am skeptical about #2, both short and long term, and I have concerns that 1 & 3 will come true,
at least in the US where profit is King and whistleblowers tend to be ignored or blackballed.
And ultimately that is my point: if those who have legitimate questions about nuke power, both
in and out of the industry, are labeled with the monikers “enviro whacko”, “irrational fear-
mongerer”, etc. then I am most certainly concerned about that. There must be strong and
uncompromising overview of any such project, without value judgements being thrown the way
of those who would question certain aspects of the project.
Then we take the profit motive out . Government builds them.
We have been in court trying to get scrubbers on coal smokestacks. We have to force them to do public safety. Something is wrong with that. Of course the Bush admin stopped all the suits but Clinton was after them.
If it gets to nuclear I will be very afraid. In Mich we have lost 40 pounds of uranium,Scotland,Amsterdam,Sweden and several US plants have missing uranium.I do not believe it as safe as most of you do, And a problem would be catastrophic.
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/sweden-nuclear-closure-040806 I am glad you all are convinced.I am not. Problems abound in places with newer technology.
http://menlocampus.wr.usgs.gov/50years/accomplishments/nuclear.html I remain unsold. This is typical. The builders are about the money.
My money is on the oil spill if we look at the most probable series of events. The amount of oil in a modern super tanker is staggering. While oil tankers have safe guards, they are no where near as redundantly protected as a train carrying nuclear waste. Even if we assume that a train derailment scenerio somehow has the waste breaking out of the containment ( :dubious: ), its going to be a very localized toxic waste clean up scenerio…as opposed to the oil going all over the ocean.
I guess the correct answer would be…it depends. If the train derailed in a high population area, and if the containment completely failed, then its possible (though highly improbable) that it could be very bad…while if the supertanker only sprung a leak in an area that allowed rapid containment of the oil spill then there could be minimal damage to the environment.
-XT
Since its a new year I’m going to try a different tact here. Instead of pointing out the fact that you have once again simply done a drive by with your links, I’ll ask you…what about those two linked articles do you think is important to the discussion? What about those two linked articles makes you unconvinced that nuclear power is a viable alternative to CO2 producing power generation? What about those two articles do you feel points out how dangerous nuclear power is or can be? What about them leaves you unconvinced?
IOW, try to give some analysis to your posts instead of simply posting a link and leaving it to us to attempt to guess what the fuck you are getting at. Try it some time…might help your arguements.
-XT
And yet, at the same time, there have been literally millions of engineering projects worldwide that have bitten no one in the ass. It’s easy to point fingers at the few failures, but it’s worth remembering that they stand out just because they’re failures. Look at commercial aviation in the U.S. – a very complex system, involving lots and lots of moving parts, some commercial, some government, some new, some old – a system where even a tiny failure can kill hundreds. And yet how many airline crashes have there been rcently in the U.S.? That crash in Kentucky last year that killed 49 people was the first significant airline disaster since November 2001. So in the past five years, according to some statistics from the NTSB, there have been about 3.5 billion passenger enplanements, and less than 100 fatalities.
Everybody makes a big deal about Boston’s Big Dig and the engineering failures there. And how many people have been killed by these engineering failures? One.
Let’s not fixate on the few failures and ignore the successes that happen, unremarked, every day and everywhere. Every time we get through a day, using whatever transportation we like, walking in, through, and under buildings, using elevators, traversing bridges, whatever it is we do, we should offer up a testimony to successful engineering. In fact, correct engineering is so commonplace that it becomes invisible – we forget about it. Let us never think that failure is the norm. It isn’t.
Simple,it will not be safe. They have a history of cutting corners. Do you have no problem when they build a nuke plant on an active fault. I believe a large move toward nukes will result in an accident.
We have had many oil tanker spills and ruptures. If we get enough trains moving nuclear waste there will eventually be a serious problem. The scale of nuclear problems dwarfs the oil spill problem unless the Valdez spilled in your lap.
If your calculations say that nuke is safer good for you. Mine do not. Many on this thread imply that Nclear energy is a safe and proven way to create energy. There are a lot who disagree .
The train derailment is not the biggest threat . Meltdowns and Chernobyl are. There have been many scares. Does anyone think the Russians built their plants anticipating trouble.? Nope,just like many here they thought the technology they trusted would work.
I think the problem is you added up the various risks, got a number that was too small and then decided to throw in an extra variable, X, comprising the sum of your fears and got a total that was big and scary enough to satisfy the conclusion you’d already jumped to.
Again with the chernobyl and meltdown bullcrap. We’re not in the 60s and 70s anymore. Read some current facts on the issues - the new reactors can’t melt down. Period. Its not possible. Give some reasoning to your argument that nuclear plant disaster would be more devastating than an oil or coal disaster. If you think a train carrying nuclear waste derailing would be worse for the environment than an oil spill, explain why. I’ll start: IMO the oil spill would be worse because the casks that store the nuclear waste wouldn’t open. They’re tested to survive train wrecks. Even if they did, the waste is vitrified (made into glass) so that the surroundings would have a brief encounter with high levels of radiation at the very worst and there would be no ‘spill’ to clean up. We have history to look at for the clean up of oil spills. Its not pretty.
Instead of yelling ‘chernobyl’ and ‘meltdown’!!!11!!omg!! give some actual arguments.
What will not be safe? Safe for whom? Safe in what way? Paragraphs my man…whole sentences. Try and sit down and actually compose an entire post listing your thoughts. Stop with these cryptic one liners and drive by posts…please. If you have actual thoughts on this subject, try putting them down so we can see what the hell you are talking about.
And yet, the examples of major problems are pretty few and far between…as are examples of the loss of life due to nuclear power. By contrast, IIRC something like 1000 workers die a year mining coal world wide…while less than 1000 people have died in the history of nuclear power if we exclude the Russian disaster, and its only 1000 if we look at the long term deaths IIRC.
It depends. I’d need some of those pesky details in order to have an informed opinion about it.
Many people believe many different things…most of them incorrect. What leads you to this belief? Certainly it can’t be looking at the history of the nuclear power industry, so it must be faith based. Unless you’d like to actually sit down and compose a post detailing where this belief of yours comes from, what its based on, maybe some details of your thoughts on the subject, etc etc.
Why yes, we have. Many of them have been environmental disasters too. How many environmental disasters have there been in the nuclear power industry again? 1? Whats your point?
Why? Do you have any idea of the amount of waste we are even talking about here? Do you think that its comparable to the amount of oil or coal transported? Details man!
What do you base this on? Your own irrational fears? Some obscure data for obvious anti-nuke sites (like Greenpeace that you used earlier)? Or do you have some rational basis for this assertion?
Thats nice. Mine are based on actual observance of history, rational thought, and actually taking a look at the various issues involved in power generation, and transportation of the waste, taking into account the various risk factors involved. What are your’s based on?
How many of those have occured in the decades long use of nuclear power again? What has been the short term, medium term and long term effects thus far of these meltdowns? Why do you pre-suppose that Chernobyl type disasters are possible with western style nuclear plants…or are your fears focused on former Eastern Bloc nations and Russia (and perhaps China)? Do you even know what happened at Chernobyl and why? Because I’m guessing you don’t know the answer to either of those. Would you like to learn about it before you go spouting such stupid stuff? I have a few links if you’d like to read them. Or you could go on Wiki and see for yourself. Might be a good idea…just a thought.
And yet, how many actual disasters are we talking about here…and what has been their impact on the environment short term, medium and long term thus far?
-XT
Personally, I’d like to see an engineering company say something like “We’re planning to build a reactor and are debating the location. The community that gives us the best suitable land deal with the fewest headaches will get residential discounts on their electricity bills in inverse proportion to their distance from the plant, up to 90% off for a house within a half-mile of the facility down to about 10% off for a family living 20 miles away.”
I’m not sure how this could be worked out, but at the very least, the property values around the plant would not depreciate as much if the electricity was almost free. Heck, it might get small cities competing for new reactor construction.
It’s not as good as the isolated reactor farm model, connected to city grids with superconducting cables carrying millions of watts, but at least I’m open to ideas.
Ths thread has incidentally led me to read up on thorium reactors, which look damned interesting. I’d like to see India get a working model up and running.