Japan Quake Damage Mounts; Reactor Watched

[Mazomaniac]

Originally Posted by ninasastri

I knew that there are different forms of reactors in western/eastern countries but i didn`t know enough to see the difference.

Soviet-designed reactors are just a disaster waiting to happen. It's really incredible that the world let those idiots build those things. Chernobyl was a matter of when, not if.

I would not say that current designs from the US or western Europe are "safe" either. In fact, the AP1000 series reactor that is our current latest and greatest may be even more prone to failure from an earthquake than the older designs having trouble in Japan. GE is currently building four of those reactors for the Chinese so I guess we'll soon see how well they do.

The biggest problem with nukes, though, isn't the design - it's the people.

Humans fail. They make mistakes. They break safety rules in the name of profit. They fall asleep at control stations. We've come a long, long way on that topic since TMI (the System 80 design used at the Palo Verde plant in Arizona is particularly notable for is human-friendly engineering) but there's still a long way to go with it. So long as a plant can fail from a single human error - and all of the currently built designs can - Mazo won't call any nuke plant "safe".

Cheers,
Mazo.

[pjorourke]

Originally Posted by Mazomaniac

The biggest problem with nukes, though, isn't the design - it's the people.

Humans fail. They make mistakes. They break safety rules in the name of profit. They fall asleep at control stations. We've come a long, long way on that topic since TMI (the System 80 design used at the Palo Verde plant in Arizona is particularly notable for is human-friendly engineering) but there's still a long way to go with it. So long as a plant can fail from a single human error - and all of the currently built designs can - Mazo won't call any nuke plant "safe".

Reminds me of that great quote from Warren Buffet: "You should put your money into a company that can be run by an idiot because eventually it will be run by an idiot."

[WTF]

Originally Posted by Mazomaniac

. So long as a plant can fail from a single human error - and all of the currently built designs can - Mazo won't call any nuke plant "safe".

Cheers,
Mazo.

Mazo,
Nothing is safe. Which are worse odds, dying in a car accident or from nuclear radiation?


How Chernobyl myths became official


http://paulseaman.eu/2011/01/how-che...came-official/

[pjorourke]

Dying in a car wreck is much higher.

[gnadfly]

Originally Posted by Mazomaniac

Soviet-designed reactors are just a disaster waiting to happen.
...

The biggest problem with nukes, though, isn't the design - it's the people.

Humans fail. They make mistakes. They break safety rules in the name of profit.
So long as a plant can fail from a single human error - and all of the currently built designs can - Mazo won't call any nuke plant "safe".

Jeez....

Soviets failed at a building a lot of "big" complex things: submarines, refineries, aircraft, rockets, nukes plants, cars etc. I guess there was too much profit in communism.

I guess nothing must be considered "safe" in Mazo's eyes. I can't think of much that can't be taken down due to the failure of a single human when one considers the design, development, implementation and operation.

[WTF]

Originally Posted by gnadfly

Jeez....

Soviets failed at a building a lot of "big" complex things: submarines, refineries, aircraft, rockets, nukes plants, cars etc. .

.

Actually that is not true.

[Mazomaniac]

Originally Posted by WTF

Mazo,
Nothing is safe. Which are worse odds, dying in a car accident or from nuclear radiation?

I guess you missed the bit about my first degree being in high energy physics . . . .

Mazo is not the least bit worried about dying in a nuclear plant accident. The chance of the public receiving a harmful dose in an accident is minuscule.

What Mazo is seriously worried about is that

1) nuclear accidents make large tracts of land uninhabitable for long periods of time and the necessary cleanup causes terrible environmental damage,

2) nuclear accidents have catastrophic effects on local and regional economies,

3) the issue of waste is still not fully addressed, and

4) the issue of non-proliferation isn't even close to being addressed.

I'm not scared of radioactive material. I spent years working with it. I'd actually prefer to work with radioisotopes versus toxic chemicals or bioagents. You can at least easily detect radioactive contamination. You never know if you're being exposed to a toxin or a virus until it's too late.

So yes, Mazo fully appreciates the risks of nuclear power. He would actually like to see nuclear power put to good use. He just doesn't trust the people who currently have control of that initiative.

The problems in Japan illustrate this perfectly. Hydrogen explosions at a nuke plant were pretty much inconceivable until the last couple of days. This was such a well know hazard and there were so many precautions taken against it that nobody ever thought it could possibly occur. Obviously there's something about what's happening in Japan that somebody ain't telling the whole truth about yet. In fact, Switzerland halted approval of new plants today precisely because they are so freaked out about the hydrogen explosions in Japan. If they're getting hydrogen explosions at a nuke plant then things are waaaaaaayyyyyy worse than they're letting us know about.

Think about it: What other industry can blow up two eight story buildings and still go on TV with a straight face and tell you that it's a relatively minor accident and that you shouldn't worry?

And that's what Mazo thinks about it.

Cheers,
Mazo.

[Mazomaniac]

Originally Posted by gnadfly

Soviets failed at a building a lot of "big" complex things: submarines, refineries, aircraft, rockets, nukes plants, cars etc. I guess there was too much profit in communism.

Soviet aircraft turbines left the west in the dust.

Their torpedoes are still the best in the world.

They lead the world in both high temperature and high pressure physics.

Take off the "God Bless the USA" blinders and see the real.

I guess nothing must be considered "safe" in Mazo's eyes. I can't think of much that can't be taken down due to the failure of a single human when one considers the design, development, implementation and operation.

That's correct, but how many other things cost you $5B to clean up when they break? Get the point?

As usual your thinking only goes deep enough for you to try and boost your ego by taking a juvenile dig at somebody else. I guess nothing is worth thinking about long enough when there's a school-yard taunt to be thrown out.

Cheers,
Mazo.

[Texas Contrarian]

Obviously every method of generating large amounts of baseload power involves risks. Twenty-nine people died in a West Virginia coal mine explosion just last year, and thousands of deaths are caused every year by the toxic output of coal-fired power plants.

It seems to me that nuclear power offers the least disadvantageous way of satisfying our growing needs.

I've long wondered why we don't build nuke plants in the valleys of Appalachia and transport the power to population centers such as Chicago and the East Coast via ultra-high voltage DC lines. The construction would take place in some of the most economically hard-hit areas of the nation and could replace coal-mining jobs lost over the years.

The same could be done in the Nevada desert, safely removed from the riskiest seismic zones but just a few hundred miles from the Los Angeles and San Francisco metro areas.

Ditto for the uglier parts of West Texas, just a few hundred miles from Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, and Houston.

[Mazomaniac]

Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

The same could be done in the Nevada desert, safely removed from the riskiest seismic zones but just a few hundred miles from the Los Angeles and San Francisco metro areas.

Already done. See the Palo Verde plant in the middle-of-nowhere Arizona.

Unfortunately being in the middle of nowhere still doesn't prevent people from screwing it up. While Palo Verde is one of the safest designs we've ever built the operator still blew it. At one point the plant operated for more than a month with a primary safety system completely disabled. To make it worse, the plant operator knew that the system was out and still didn't do anything about it. Another time they ran the plant for who-knows-how-long with no water in the emergency cooling system.

Like I said, it ain't the technology - it's the people behind it.

Cheers,
Mazo.

[pjorourke]

Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

I've long wondered why we don't build nuke plants in the valleys of Appalachia and transport the power to population centers such as Chicago and the East Coast via ultra-high voltage DC lines. The construction would take place in some of the most economically hard-hit areas of the nation and could replace coal-mining jobs lost over the years.

great idea. You could even use the land they already destroyed with strip mining -- a two-fer.

[WTF]

Originally Posted by Mazomaniac

Think about it: What other industry can blow up two eight story buildings and still go on TV with a straight face and tell you that it's a relatively minor accident and that you shouldn't worry?

.

Big Tobacco

[WTF]

Originally Posted by Mazomaniac

Like I said, it ain't the technology - it's the people behind it.

Cheers,
Mazo.

That can be said about anything. Especially plane crash's.

I've read Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed in it he devotes a chapter on the long term clean up cost of say mining. Same principal. I hear ya my brother.

[pjorourke]

Its a basic rule of thumb that the clean up of a mess costs about 10x what it cost to make the mess.

[WTF]

Originally Posted by pjorourke

Its a basic rule of thumb that the clean up of a mess costs about 10x what it cost to make the mess.

1000x in divorce