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The question is do modern reactors fall far enough into the safe corner to warrant widespread deployment?

Indeed. Each exposed human being must be able to decide. As long-lived (/'hot') waste may be a matter of concern for future generations we have a problem.

Jet liners

There are at least a few major differences with a nuke reactor:

1. Jetliners rarely kill non-passengers and everyone can chose to avoid them (be a non-passenger)
2. They kill locally (in space and time) and 'patently' while every bystander, and even anti-nuke and distant people, in space and time, may be more than slightly annoyed by a nuclear reactor, and may be unable to know that they are at risk (exposed to ionizing radiation). Even without any disaster, because part of the waste is highly dangerous!
3. Jetliners are very difficult to replace in their mission. Civilian nuke, used for gridpower generation, is not.

As with cars

Same answers, adaptation (as for non-passengers victims, who now can only dismiss the risk by leaving cities) left as an exercise for the reader :-)

people regard the risk/benefit ratio to be worth the deaths

That's the whole point.

the risks/rewards lie on a continuum and that despite it being distasteful to admit some number of deaths are acceptable

Indeed. BTW a jetliner killed my brother in 1998 (flight SR-111, he was a passenger), I had to give a thought about those matters.

If you compare the number of people likely to be killed by reactor malfunctions to the number of people saved by some consequence of the reactors existing does it compare favourably?

Answering is difficult, for example (again!) because we have to take waste into account. Moreover one cannot neglect lies published by some people advocating it, which is not precisely a good factor in my book.

Sourcing if of paramount importance. Some UN agencies, for example, spread pure BS

Yeah. Sure. "The people is dumb".

Let's see...

> The 4,000 deaths of cleanup workers at Chernobyl is completely unexcusable.

This estimation was touted by the IAEA, which runs in order to disseminate nuclear powerplants, and by the OMS (censored by the IAEA for all nuclear-related matters).

Moreover the IAEA announced "4,000 deaths, grand total, definitive and scientific (United Nations) estimation" in September 2005 (it wasn't definitive, nor sci, nor UN) before discreetling backing up in April 2006 ("9000, stated only for a subset of the Soviet population and for solid cancers"). Here is an overview and an article.

> 800 deaths are objectively fewer than the 105,000 reported in Wikipedia.

On WP (en and fr) there are too many pro-nuke agit-propers, eager to relay disinformation and censor facts.

> 4,000 deaths are objectively fewer than "the six-figure death counts that opponents of nuclear power once cited".

The most famous report published by the opponents (titled TORCH) was published AFTER IAEA's report.

The IAEA estimation ("4000 ...") is mainly based upon scientific material from E. Cardis (who served as the scientific secretary for the study which leaded to the report), and they properly credited her. Know what? As soon as the ''4000 deaths'' thesis was published she declared that 30,000 to 60,000 cancer deaths is "the right order of magnitude". See New Scientists and Nature. Her most recent study leads to "By 2065, models predict that about 16,000 (95% UI 3,400 72,000) cases of thyroid cancer and 25,000 (95% UI 11,000 59,000) cases of other cancers may be expected due to radiation from the accident and that about 16,000 deaths (95% UI 6,700 - 38,000) from these cancers may occur).". Abstract: no less than 6,700, approx 16,000, maybe up to 38,000 ... remember that the main "opponents" report (TORCH) authors estimated that 30,000 to 60,000 may die. Therefore the 'total mortality' estimation published by the very expert committed by the IAEA are more on the same ballpark of published by scientific "opponents" than IAEA's.

The IAEA's "4,000 total" is ridiculous. Quoting it, as you did, is at best naive.

> don't see people debating the accuracy of the numbers they use
> Grow up

Yeah. Sure. Good advice, chief. Thanx! Here is my hint: avoid propagating lies. The ongoing propaganda campaign "eat nuke! good for health! yummy!" is already well funded, they don't need any help.

Yeah. Sure. "The people is dumb".

Let's see...

> The 4,000 deaths of cleanup workers at Chernobyl is completely unexcusable.

This estimation was touted by the IAEA, which runs in order to disseminate nuclear powerplants, and by the OMS (censored by the IAEA for all nuclear-related matters).

Moreover the IAEA announced "4,000 deaths, grand total, definitive and scientific (United Nations) estimation" in September 2005 (it wasn't definitive, nor sci, nor UN) before discreetling backing up in April 2006 ("9000, stated only for a subset of the Soviet population and for solid cancers"). Here is an overview and an article.

> 800 deaths are objectively fewer than the 105,000 reported in Wikipedia.

On WP (en and fr) there are too many pro-nuke agit-propers, eager to relay disinformation and censor facts.

> 4,000 deaths are objectively fewer than "the six-figure death counts that opponents of nuclear power once cited".

The most famous report published by the opponents (titled TORCH) was published AFTER IAEA's report.

The IAEA estimation ("4000 ...") is mainly based upon scientific material from E. Cardis (who served as the scientific secretary for the study which leaded to the report), and they properly credited her. Know what? As soon as the ''4000 deaths'' thesis was published she declared that 30,000 to 60,000 cancer deaths is "the right order of magnitude". See New Scientists and Nature. Her most recent study leads to "By 2065, models predict that about 16,000 (95% UI 3,400 72,000) cases of thyroid cancer and 25,000 (95% UI 11,000 59,000) cases of other cancers may be expected due to radiation from the accident and that about 16,000 deaths (95% UI 6,700 - 38,000) from these cancers may occur).". Abstract: no less than 6,700, approx 16,000, maybe up to 38,000 ... remember that the main "opponents" report (TORCH) authors estimated that 30,000 to 60,000 may die. Therefore the 'total mortality' estimation published by the very expert committed by the IAEA are more on the same ballpark of published by scientific "opponents" than IAEA's.

The IAEA's "4,000 total" is ridiculous. Quoting it, as you did, is at best naive.

> don't see people debating the accuracy of the numbers they use
> Grow up

Yeah. Sure. Good advice, chief. Thanx! Here is my hint: avoid propagating lies. The ongoing propaganda campaign "eat nuke! good for health! yummy!" is already well funded, they don't need any help.

Are low-cost low-tech, not adequate for baseload.

> photovoltiacs are 4-10 times as expensive.

Again: the TCO is the only good measure. 10 times more expensive lasting 50 times more is a good deal. I'm not the one ignoring arguments, there.

> Biomass makes plenty of sense in some areas - Heck, my grandmother uses it to heat her house. Still, there's very little sense in trying to use it for electricity

One many usages it replaces gridpowered or oil-burning stuff.

> we're better off rendering it to ethanol or biodiesel

It may be true on a large scale.

> I've never liked Sen. Kennedy, but that was one of my head shakers. The current hypocrisy of many of the 'green' politicians irk me tremendously

I agree, but judging anything by the use most politicians have of it is often condemning it

>> That's one of the most weird assertion touted by the nuclear industry. It is not solid and leads to implicit very disputed "conclusions". Briefly: radionuclides emitted by coal plants are not very active nor concentrated.

> They're the same particles

Indeed. This was not my main argument

> studies of high-background radiation areas vs low-background radiation areas have found no increased levels of cancer.

Some found a relationship, that's why the linear model is the official one. There is also this radiation homeostasis thing. All this is pretty complicated, moreover we will only be able to count the harmed when the last nuclear waste will be cold. Putting abruptly "coal-plants emissions are more dangerous than nuclear ones" is absolutely ridiculous.

> Coal electricity generation is one of the larger producers of CO2 in the USA. Shutting them down, besides eliminating all the real pollution they produce, would drop our CO2 emissions by quite a bit. Cheap power can help to develop affordable alternatives to oil powered vehicles.

I agree, but some messages are at least understood by some as "nuclear power plants will solve the CO2 problem", this is ridiculous

> you could collocate an ethanol plant to help make use of the waste heat.

Co-generation is no specific to nuclear (it is much more rarely used in a nuclear plant because of some risk, induced or at least perceived)

> you'll never be able to convince me that nuclear power isn't safe

Chernobyl. TMI (no one knows for sure why it did not degenerate into a complete meltdown). Yeah, there are people saying that the tech is OK now, just as some said, before the disaster/incident that those Cherno/TMI plants were safe.

> I won't be able to convince you that it can be done safely.

Mostly because I somewhat know about security. In a word: there is no perfect answer nor absolute shield. Also: because the nuclear "camp" is one of the most secretive and propagandist (there is a bunch of plain liars, there).

> the highest target you've mentioned is 40% renewable In 2025, for a switch which began in 1997. That's 35 years. We now have 150 years of coal use, and 100 of oil use (with approx 70 of hard dependence). Given the ridiculous amount of R&D done on renewable those 30 last years (worldwide), this is an ambitious achievement.

> we'd still need to make up the remaining 60%

Coal produces 52% of US electricity (grid power). Let's add clean coal (it already started, at the federal and local level) and energy conservation, and we are done with the coal problem with no new nuclear plant.

Is it perfectly half-spherical and infinitely solid, in order to avoid a China syndrome?

> That alone would have saved Chernobyl as well, if it'd had one.

The convenient disaster's explanation summed up by "Cherno was ill-designed to the point of being very dangerous" is AFAIK moot. I'm not able to detail but here is an account AFAIK adequate, please let me know if there is a flaw.

RBMK (Cherno's reactor type) is based on a "modular containment" principle. The heart is built by pressure tubes (Cherno: 1700 of them), nearly independent to each other, in order to cope with most incidents types (steam or cooler leak/loss...) at the tube (or tiny group of tubes) level, while one can manage it, even at the price of shutting the reactor down.

The PWR architecture (used in many plants) is not as efficient: a leak in the primary circuit releases a huge amount of steam in the containment structure (you don't want that as it can blow at least part of it)

RBMK are instable at low-level of produced power, but above a given level (Cherno: 800 thermal MW) the temperature coefficient of reactivity surpasses the void coefficient of reactivity, therefore one has only to avoid operating the beast below this level. Various dispositions and safeties ensure that, during a shutdown, a continuous loss of power is maintained, and there is no danger. Chernobyl's operators disabled safeties (this is a real cause of the disaster) in order to restart the reactor while it produced approx 30 MW (thermal), leading to the known mishaps (Xenon-135 poisoning, control rods manually raised (ouch, huge mistake!), less power to the primary circuit pumps, less water pressure, steam, void doping the nuclear reactions (3200 thermal MW in a few seconds), steam explosion (nuclear) distributing the fuel, water+zirconium -> hydrogen plus another steam explosion which destroyed the building... all bets off)

AFAIK a first version of such an account was published (IAEA...) just after the disaster, but promptly hidden. When truth is not convenient lies do. > Chernobyl reactors were still producing power until the last one was shut down in 2000. Yep: their design was not particularly dangerous.

Let's push the ball: an answer to the question may be "let's have a list of what is needed (goals, not means) then let's establish a protocol to assess how it is provided (always? fast?...), objective, user-understandable and user-runnable". Here is a piece about such an approach.

Exactly! And as Wikipedia and Google may be mutual benefitors...

Google earns money thanks to AdSense (ads banners), which is boosted by an efficient way to quickly know which topic is of interest for a given Web user. There is a quick way for Google to enhance their current set of tools: http://www.makarevitch.org/rant/google_strategy.ht ml

We need to share trust about what other people publish, and identity is a special form of this: you know that this man is Mr Sixpack because of somebody introduced you. Somebody you trust. Here is an attempts: WebDSign http://www.makarevitch.org/webdsign/

Some put plain disinformation among Wikipedia's good material and it often remains unnoticed for a long time. Chernobyl case: http://makarevitch.org/rant/IAEA/tchernobyl-200509 /chernobyl.html#wp

Take a look at this short chronology and corresponding perspective on Wikipedia

There is a French version

--
Yep!

Take a look at this short chronology and corresponding perspective on Wikipedia

There is a French version

--
Yep!

Take a look at this short chronology and corresponding perspective on Wikipedia

There is a French version

--
Yep!

The Chernobyl Forum (IAEA, OMS...) did publish the ''4000'' figure. Please access to those documents: OMS and IAEA, then let's read:

-=-=-=-=-=
20 Years Later a UN Report Provides Definitive Answers and Ways to Repair Lives

5 SEPTEMBER 2005 | GENEVA -- A total of up to 4000 people could eventually die of radiation exposure from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (NPP) accident nearly 20 years ago, an international team of more than 100 scientists has concluded.
=-=-=-=-=-

It was not UN-approved, it was not definitive (it was a draft, the definite one was published a few days ago, read below), the names of the scientists endorsing the ''A total of 4000 people could eventually die'' was not published, this very information (''total 4000 people'') was not in the draft report... In a word this abstract was pure BS.

Moreover they had a big press conference in order to announce this ''4000...'' thesis.

The the press relayed this ''4000, total'' thesis, and they did not publish a corrective document (from Sept, 2005 to April, 2006)

And now they discreetly publish the real definitive ONU-approved report, with a totally different info (''9000 in a small subset of the concerned population, and for a single illness'')

I know that the press is not always efficient but on this particular matter, well.. you decide. If you are a taxpayer don't forget that those IAEA/OMS/... people eat thanks to you in order to ''inform'' us, in order to decide.

Here is another funny excerpt (from the sharp'n good Nature):
-=-=-=-=-=
Melissa Fleming, a press officer working at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, who helped coordinate the report's publicity, says [ ... ] a decision was made to focus on the lower 4,000 figure [ ... ] "It was a bold action to put out a new figure that was much less than conventional wisdom." The figure has been removed from the final summary, however, published this month.
-=-=-=-=-=

Therefore, in a nutshell, "it is not true (this 4000 figure is not anymore a grand total in the definitive report) but we published it in order to lower other estimates, and it was a bold action. Is there a way to lie boldly?

--

Nat, rants

Moreover let's scrutinize all this Chernobyl 'material' because disinformation rulz.

Sept. 2005: the Chernobyl Forum (IAEA, in fact), during a press conference, publishes an abstract of its draft report stating that 4000 people have and will die. But the name of the authors abstract and report was not known, it did not state that those 4000 people are from a small subset of the human beings concerned, the report did not contain the key sentence of the abstract, the report was presented as an UN report albeit it was not (it is published by agencies, and not published by UN), it was only a draft...

The abstract (''4,000 people will die from the effects of the 1986 accident at Chernobyl'') was largely propagated (see for example this BBC's account). It was not definitive nor adopted by the UN, albeit presented as such.

April 2006; the very same Chernobyl Forum discreetly publishes the definitive version of the report, where this 4000 figure was replaced (see page 106) by ''9000'', which was stated only for a subset of the Soviet population and for solid cancers (numerous other illnesses are radiation-induced). It was then accepted by the UN. See http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060417/full/440982 a.html, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4922508.stm

Therefore those guys induced the whole media into spreading the ''Chernobyl: 4000 people will die globally'' during 7 months, albeit their ''best'' minimization is ''9000 people will die from from solids cancers amongst the approx 7 million who were in the vicinity''

Lies, damn lies... and the Atomic Guys

Gandi.net was sold in September 2005, a new team is in charge.

--
http://www.makarevitch.org/rant/rant.html

Facts, damn facts... and the IAEA.

Detailed version:

By fact many mean widely propagated information.

For scientific and technical matters this approach works because the very publication leads to an efficient peer review, and anyone can refute or rebut.

But outside of these categories some copy/paste of 'published' information, presented as 'facts', are pure and simple bullshit. For example because the authors omit important data, use distorted ways to relate or plainly lie.

Moreover there is a major and very dangerous confusion between the 'fact' that something is published and the factual status of the information published. All efficient propagandists take gain of this confusion.

More explicitly: after reading something presented as a fact and beginning with "According to a press release from the Agency For BlahBlahBlah (an apparently serious body): ...", many will forget that the 'fact' is the press release, not its content! They will memorize the 'information' delivered and label it it's a fact, it's true.

Therefore anyone who thinks that (in non scientific or technical fields) only "published material" is factual must, in order to avoid relaying disinformation, take care of his sources honesty and rigor. For the time being some Wikipedia articles (outside of the tech and sci fields) relay plain disinformation.

As a sidenote: I experienced such mess (French) on Wikipedia fr: where an 'information' is presented as scientific albeit it is very easy to prove that this is not scientific and very crippled (here is an short abstract written in English).

We all know that a reader must not believe each and every published material ('tin-foil hat' ), but is there any effort planned to avoid letting WP becoming JAPKP (Just Another Parrot for Known Publishers of (even bad) information)?

There is a detailed perspective (French), and a potential solution (WebDSign, English).

Detailed version:

By fact many mean widely propagated information.

For scientific and technical matters this approach works because the very publication leads to an efficient peer review, and anyone can refute or rebut.

But outside of these categories some copy/paste of 'published' information, presented as 'facts', are pure and simple bullshit. For example because the authors omit important data, use distorted ways to relate or plainly lie.

Moreover there is a major and very dangerous confusion between the 'fact' that something is published and the factual status of the information published. All efficient propagandists take gain of this confusion.

More explicitly: after reading something presented as a fact and beginning with "According to a press release from the Agency For BlahBlahBlah (an apparently serious body): ...", many will forget that the 'fact' is the press release, not its content! They will memorize the 'information' delivered and label it it's a fact, it's true.

Therefore anyone who thinks that (in non scientific or technical fields) only "published material" is factual must, in order to avoid relaying disinformation, take care of his sources honesty and rigor. For the time being some Wikipedia articles (outside of the tech and sci fields) relay plain disinformation.

As a sidenote: I experienced such mess (French) on Wikipedia fr: where an 'information' is presented as scientific albeit it is very easy to prove that this is not scientific and very crippled (here is an short abstract written in English).

We all know that a reader must not believe each and every published material ('tin-foil hat' ), but is there any effort planned to avoid letting WP becoming JAPKP (Just Another Parrot for Known Publishers of (even bad) information)?

There is a detailed perspective (French), and a potential solution (WebDSign, English).

Detailed version:

By fact many mean widely propagated information.

For scientific and technical matters this approach works because the very publication leads to an efficient peer review, and anyone can refute or rebut.

But outside of these categories some copy/paste of 'published' information, presented as 'facts', are pure and simple bullshit. For example because the authors omit important data, use distorted ways to relate or plainly lie.

Moreover there is a major and very dangerous confusion between the 'fact' that something is published and the factual status of the information published. All efficient propagandists take gain of this confusion.

More explicitly: after reading something presented as a fact and beginning with "According to a press release from the Agency For BlahBlahBlah (an apparently serious body): ...", many will forget that the 'fact' is the press release, not its content! They will memorize the 'information' delivered and label it it's a fact, it's true.

Therefore anyone who thinks that (in non scientific or technical fields) only "published material" is factual must, in order to avoid relaying disinformation, take care of his sources honesty and rigor. For the time being some Wikipedia articles (outside of the tech and sci fields) relay plain disinformation.

As a sidenote: I experienced such mess (French) on Wikipedia fr: where an 'information' is presented as scientific albeit it is very easy to prove that this is not scientific and very crippled (here is an short abstract written in English).

We all know that a reader must not believe each and every published material ('tin-foil hat' ), but is there any effort planned to avoid letting WP becoming JAPKP (Just Another Parrot for Known Publishers of (even bad) information)?

There is a detailed perspective (French), and a potential solution (WebDSign, English).

> Kyoto mandates a reduction of CO2 emissions below the level of 1990
> In 1990 the French nukes were already operating for more than a decade.
> How could they further reduce emissions when their effect is included in the baseline?

My point is that nuclear power plants are not sufficient to solve the greenhouse-gas emission problem, nor they are the sole solution for grid-electricity producing devices. My point is to ask people saying that "nuke plants will solve the problem" to have some reality check in France (where, as a sidenote, the nuclear-produced part of the electricity produced in France regularly climbed for the last 30 years).

>> crap ("nuke is the solution for greenhouse gas reduction")

> What's wrong here?

Writing the solution is wrong. It is, at best, a partial solution. Please check my previous comment.

And even on this field (grid-power) nuclear plants are not the best way because one has to extract then ship the nuclear fuel. And to do that one needs to burn gasoline, therefore emit CO2...

> Could you be missing the difference between "reduction" and "elimination"?

Nope, and this is not the point.

> Would you care to explain how a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is a bad thing

It's not a bad thing, but the "nuclear plants solve the problem" stance is bullshit.

> or how nuke plants emit greenhouse gases anyway?

One has to extract then ship the nuclear fuel. And to do that one needs to burn gasoline. But this is only a side-effect, I'm OK to say that nuclear plants use do nearly not emit greenhouse gas. Other, less dangerous, approaches can do it (please read the already referenced comment).

>> "the Chernobyl disaster killed 4000 persons"

> Another 4000 are estimated to die from cancer

I disagree. Your data came from a pro-nuke (UIC) comment on a flawed communiqué from pro-nuke agencies (IAEA...) which is not signed by anyone and is presented as an excerpt from a scientific report which is, in turn, only in draft stage and without any peer review nor clearly stated authors (i.e. this is not a scientific result). In fact this is plain BS. Please take a look at this analysis and let me know. This is an abstract, the complete document is in French (sorry about that) but some non-French speaking people found it somewhat easy to grasp as it often quotes English documents.

Among other information (read the complete anlysis) please check this "Nuclear News" (very serious and pro-nuke publication) article about it (page 46). Among numerous critics you will find that the main responsible for the "health" report (WHO's Dr Repacholi), said "The scientists did not want to include numbers for predicted deaths, but public relations officials had wanted them in the summary". Isn't it clear enough?

The "4000 deaths" commnuiqué is not science but plain disinformation.

An official ONU report from 1995 (the real United Nations "General Assembly", not another IAEA document posing at it) states:

-=-=-=- SNIP -=-=-=-=-

[ LIQUIDATORS, who cleaned the disaster zone ]

20. These men, drawn mainly from the then Soviet army [ ... ] In the time since, these people have dispersed across the former Soviet Union. Much of the registering and tracing of their whereabouts is highly inaccurate, in part because of the break-up of the Soviet Union and subsequent socio- economic changes. There is even uncertainty as to ho

Nuclear plants can only replace power generation sources. In order to evaluate the real impact of power generation sources which don't emit CO2, let's compare the amount of CO2 emitted by existing "electricity production" facilities to all the other uses.

Amount of CO2 emitted in the US by sector in 1998 (million metric tons carbon per year):
Electricity production: 549.8
Industrial: 298.9 (477.7 minus 178.8)
Transportation: 484.2 (484.9 minus .7 from electricity)
Commercial: 60 (238.4 minus 178.4)
Residential: 92.6 (284.5 minus 191.9)
(Source: Energy Information Administration (mainly page 25))

Bottomline: electricity production accounts for 550 while the other players sum up to 936. And those 936 will be very hard to reduce because we will have to hackor replace every internal combustion engine, every classic heater... But we need (Kyoto) to reduce those emissions by at least 60% before 2050. Therefore the theory "nuclar plants will solve the greenhouse gas problem" is, as far as I understand, JAAL (Just Another Awful Lie).

Any thingie able to produce grid-electricity without polluting is interesting, but some write that nuclear plants are the only way. This is... well, you guessed it... JAAL, because most clean sources (sun, wind...) can do it.

In fact even the coal plants can be much cleaner, for example trough some clever design. Will be, in fact, instead of "can be", because some are building them right now. And don't think of it as some european gadget, see FutureGen.

Those clean sources, and even the clean coal-plants, do not produce dangerous waste and are more easy to build, run and dismantle than a nuclear plant. And they do not run amok, Chernobyl-style.

> 4000 people from Chernobyl? Wherever you are getting this from must be counting
> everyone that died in the area for whatever reason

No. This '4000' figure comes from recent (2005, September) evaluation by pro-nukes and is is very probably way underestimated.

Is it a joke? Even very pro-nuke agencies think that it will kill approx 4000 persons, and this is based upon very very dubious data and methods (see below).

> Anyway, the site that you cite says that the 4000 people estimate is based on bad science.

Indeed. Official UN agencies try hard to let us think that the disaster will only kill 4000 persons, and the proposed site shows why it is not true, why the grand total is very probably way higher.

In France alone (2000 km from Chernobyl), a Nobel Prize (G. Charpak, physics, very pro-nuke) thinks that the disaster will kill approx 300 persons (French site). Many think that it will kill at least 100000 persons. Special bonus: don't neglect the teratogen and mutagen effects.

> you might want to consider other industrial disasters. When I was in college, 7
> people were killed in a collapse at a local coal fired plant

It did not irradiate an enormous area and did not release very dangerous stuff, some active during very long periods and some freely wandering around, flying with the wind. Is ther any possible comparison?

The official message of many nuke-tenants is "nuke will solve the greenhouse-gas problem". This is pure BS, as a lab shows it right now. The lab name is 'France', where approximatively 80% of the electrical (grid power) is produced by nuclear plants.
Guess what? France missed by far the Kyoto objectives of greenhouse gas (and among them CO2) reduction, and those objectives were not ambitious (Details).

Moreover we discover, in another "lab" (England), that, in addition to all the known problems (waste, disaster...), any nuke plant dismantling produces a huge amount of very 'hot' (radioactive) crap, as revealed by the corresponding costs (always rising) and planning (delay: 100 years, and counting).

But all this information is not propagated as well as the usual pro-nuke BS.

Nuclear-vendors propagate the usual "nuclear power if safe, pigs can fly" crap ("nuke is the solution for greenhouse gas reduction", "production of clean energy producers cost most energy thant they will produce", "the Chernobyl disaster killed 4000 persons"...). One can understand that. But I wonder why some theoritically neutral (are they?) people relay it!?

This EPR project was presented in France as absolutely-sure-don't-worry-kids-it's-ok-no-glitch -ever-possible.

But when experts (from Platts) checked some blueprints of the EPR they found a major flaw. Some thingie may get stuck (expert-speak: 'sump strainer clogging') and let the whole reactor blew away.

Let's hope that in such a case it will only kick the asses of those funny "this-reactor-is-absolutely-sure"-type guys.

On this matter... let's bet that the Chernobyl population got numerous "the reactor is sure!" insurances before the accident.

As any hacker knows: a complex system cannot be absolutely secure, especially under risk-augmenting constraints (often 'cost effectiveness').

My conclusion is that all those civil nuclear reactors seem pretty sure as long as:

• no peer-review is used (in other words: no systematic searching of design and implementation flaws, therefore without any scientific approach)
• they do not provoke any disaster

And let's not talk about nuclear waste, cleaning up, or the effects of a direct attack on those beasts.

The Truth Shall Make You Free

• does not precisely define the population concerned (by those 4000 deaths). The official conclusion is "premature deaths of around 4000 people from the 600 000 affected by the higher radiation doses", but "higher radiation doses" and the 600000 group composition, are not defined. The group may only have nearly not-exposed people!
• this is not a scientific work, even if it is presented as such because nobody signed this conclusion. The WHO guys (Dr Repacholi), in charge of the pertinent study, even said that this "conclusion" was made by PR people... Read about it in Nuclear News (which is NOT a frenzy anti-nuke paper but a verious serious pro-nuke publication)
• this conclusion was 'drawn' from a report which only exists in draft stage and was not scientifically published. No peer review... no scientific value
• this conclusion is not expressed in the drafts reports
• the conclusion is presented as global, albeit the reports only covers 3 countries
• the 'health' report only studies cancers and leukemias, but many other problems arise (mutagen, teratogenesis...)
• the 'health' report states major limits for his model and data:
  • radio-induced cancers appear at last 10 years after exposition, and on average after 20 years... but the data used were collected between 1992-1998 (less than 12 years after the accident)
  • bad data quality (as already stated in 1995 in a real ONU report)
  • the model used is far from perfect
• low radiations were neglected albeit many experts think that they are dangerous, especially over long period and/or when ingested
• a model used came from observations done in another context (Hiroshima and Nagasaki: brief major and external exposition, instead of the "long, minor and often internal" after Chernobyl)

Here is a critic of those "conclusions" (French).

For scientific and technical matters this approach works because the very publication leads to an efficient peer review, and anyone can refute or rebut.

But outside of these categories some things presented as "facts" are pure and simple bullshit, for example because their authors deliberately omit important data, use distorted ways to relate or plainly lie. Therefore a pure 'fact' must be described by a witness, not by simply copy/pasting 'published' information.

There is a major and very dangerous confusion between the 'fact' that something is published and the 'factual' status of the information published. All efficient propagandists take gain of this.

More explicitly: after reading something presented as a fact and beginning with "According to a press release from the Agency For BlahBlahBlah (an apparently serious body): ...", many will forget that the 'fact' is the press release, not its content! They will memorize the 'information' delivered and label it "it's a fact, it's true".

Therefore anyone who thinks that (in non scientific or technical fields) only "published material" is factual must, in order to avoid relaying disinformation or misinformation, take care of his sources honesty and rigor.

I experienced such mess on an article published in Wikipedia fr: a press release published by a group controlled by an ONU agency was considered as a 'fact' (French) albeit anyone can demonstrate that its content, stating that a scientific study concluded that the Chernobyl accident will kill about 4000 people, is pure and simple bullshit (French): no work published, no authors, no peer review, results obtained in a very specific context and limited perimeter by unreliable methods (as stated in the report draft)...)

When an analysis of such a 'fact' arises I think that an encyclopedia must clearly state that the reported announcement is plain disinformation, and link to the demonstration.

There is a proposal to avoid this mess by informing the reader of the level of trust he choose, more or less directly, to give to the information source: WebDSign

For scientific and technical matters this approach works because the very publication leads to an efficient peer review, and anyone can refute or rebut.

But outside of these categories some things presented as "facts" are pure and simple bullshit, for example because their authors deliberately omit important data, use distorted ways to relate or plainly lie. Therefore a pure 'fact' must be described by a witness, not by simply copy/pasting 'published' information.

There is a major and very dangerous confusion between the 'fact' that something is published and the 'factual' status of the information published. All efficient propagandists take gain of this.

More explicitly: after reading something presented as a fact and beginning with "According to a press release from the Agency For BlahBlahBlah (an apparently serious body): ...", many will forget that the 'fact' is the press release, not its content! They will memorize the 'information' delivered and label it "it's a fact, it's true".

Therefore anyone who thinks that (in non scientific or technical fields) only "published material" is factual must, in order to avoid relaying disinformation or misinformation, take care of his sources honesty and rigor.

I experienced such mess on an article published in Wikipedia fr: a press release published by a group controlled by an ONU agency was considered as a 'fact' (French) albeit anyone can demonstrate that its content, stating that a scientific study concluded that the Chernobyl accident will kill about 4000 people, is pure and simple bullshit (French): no work published, no authors, no peer review, results obtained in a very specific context and limited perimeter by unreliable methods (as stated in the report draft)...)

When an analysis of such a 'fact' arises I think that an encyclopedia must clearly state that the reported announcement is plain disinformation, and link to the demonstration.

There is a proposal to avoid this mess by informing the reader of the level of trust he choose, more or less directly, to give to the information source: WebDSign

Let's devise objectives and constraints.

At the present pace the 'Wikipedia expert' will soon be of value, therefore we may enable experts to be interested in enhancing Wikipedia articles in order to gain respect. This may enable us to build the reputation system, which will benefit to WP and to the experts.

> new or otherwise unreviewed articles
> note saying "This article has not been reviewed

Any visitor must be able to read the cutting-edge version ('unstable') of an article or a reviewed one. He must be able to configure this in his personal preference and, while reading, switch between versions by clicking on a tab. Some will prefer to only read reviewed articles while others like the way it works right now.

> As for the reputation system itself: Users' reputations would start at 0

The existing user accounts and articles history offers a way, through some automagic analysis, to detect existing 'Wikipedia experts'.

The analysis will calculate, for each existing user, an 'efficiency score' on each category based on the volume, age, audience and stability of his writings. On each category the one-per-thousand best writers (who produce good-and-stable articles) will be immediately promoted into some 'Wikipedia expert' status and form the category's council. The council will be able to 'promote' other users into the 'Wikipedia expert' status.

> gradually increase both with time and with each new contribution they make

And decrease upon error discovery (which will increase the 'score' of the discoverer), inviting anyone not only to create and update but also to fix (correct).

> Certain individuals -- certified scientists, professors, etc -- could also be given field-specific bonuses

Indeed. The council in charge of the category will probably be populated, immediately after its creation, by people knowing those recognized experts. The council will be able to invite and promote them into 'experts'. An expert will be able to deliver the ultimate seal of trust to an article belonging to his category.

On some discussed or non scientific matters we need a trust-system enabling anybody to 'elect' his own experts, or to give to some entity the right to select adequate experts.

> reputations will be decreased whenever an edit is completely reverted ... upon the new content validation. Indeed!

There is a way to implement all this: WebDSign-WP

the core MS-Windows system has high-level libraries used by all Microsoft applications, therefore (in theory) any software developer working in a Microsoft team is not poised to develop whatever was already coined by another. they cooperate

many functions used by many applications (for example MS-Office) are therefore more or less ready-to-go, maybe even already loaded in the memory occupied by the operating system, when you invoke them. this speeds things up

under a free Unix the people developing system and applications rarely talk to each other. the system provides much less high-level functions (above the libc, X) than any modern MS-Windows and the only teams stuffing more factorized high-level code inside it are working on toolkits (KDE, GTK...).
note: one may argue that those libs are user-space things, please note that I use 'system' in the broad sense
this is, at first glance, less efficient than MS-Windows because there is no central authority pumping functions into a single library used by all apps, therefore many applications don't use them. any given desktop will consequently probably use many libraries providing the same services, therefore many free applications come with their own code to do things already done by other ones.

the MS-Windows approach is theoretically wonderful, mainly because less memory is occupied by various codes doing the same thing.

but it leads to various pitfalls. here are some not neglectable ones:

• a truly useful library is generic and to reach this stage its developer has to code a simple thing (thus reducing the factorization), to bloat it it or to be a genious. in practice they are more and more bloated therefore not bug-free
• any bug in it may cause a failure in any software using it. if nearly all software use it, well...

the bloated high-level services provided by MS-Windows are less stable when the machine simultaneously runs many softwares, thanks to awful side effects spawned by heavy multi-layered codes. therefore most users try to run, on a given box, as few services as possible... loosing a good part of the factorization benefits

from my experience the Unix approach is more and more efficient as time passes. it now provides an environment more flexible, easy to maintain and extend, which extracts more useful power from the hardware

it even gains, after a while, the benefit of the 'central library' approach because efficient and stable libraries tend to gain audience among developers, providing a common ground a posteriori (created for a given client code, then evaluated and adopted for others). on this particular matter the efficient way to do thing wins again: don't try to predefine the whole solution, keep it simple, progress slowly, prefer field-proven solutions

this somewhat reminds me of the 'forked childs' classic Unix trick, for a piece of software, to honor requests for each request: run an instance for each request. this means that a bug will probably scrap a request but not block/stall the whole service, which is a very simple and efficient way to achieve crude but often sufficient software-fault tolerance, albeit it is was ressource-hungry. I write was because it is much more less a system hog now, thanks to some low-level enhancements (started w vfork, copy-on-write and such) conceived after this approach

a Unix system developer tend to adopt simple and proven solutions and then fix their issues. a developer of the MS-Windows system overengineers then tries to the make the whole thing run

from my point of view the choice is a no brainer

WebDSign: thrust the Web by trust

WebDSign: thrust the Web by trust

experts on any field are such because the are recognized

if Wikipedia delivers a 'Wikipedia expertise score' which gains popularity then every person earning money thanks to his/her expertise will be interested in obtaining a good score. therefore let's use it to motivate experts to write and validate articles thanks to a challenging approach

a 'Wikipedia expertise score' will be delivered to every Wikipedia-account owner who writes at least an article. it will be a cryptographic certificates: any expert will be able to publish his score and anyone will be able to verify it because it will be digitally sealed-and-signed

on exact matters (sci and tech, not philosophy) the very fact that an expert validates an article which proves to be good (because any other expert will agree) has a value because it enables Wikipedia to allow, after a delay, a better 'expertise score' to the validating expert. therefore the first validator of a given article gains a whole lot of points, the next one gains less, and so on. the best way to be the first validator is to write the article, and any expert has available and public material for this, therefore he can do it and will earn (recognized expertise score) from doing so. from there any expert finding a factual error (validated as such by many others) will take a good fraction of the points earned, therefore the articles will be maintained and reviewed by a pool of score-seeking experts: their authors (trying to maintain them at a bulletproof stage) and other experts (trying to find errors in order to enhance their 'Wikipedia expertise score')

pitfalls :

• an expert gang may falsely 'vote wrong' in order to rack points. but using the existing (today!) set of articles an automagic analysis of the volume of information produced and its relative stability ('unpolluted' status, age and amount of readers) the motivation and efficiency of all their authors can be calculted ('scored'). therefore a software can already (right now) establish a 'confidence score' for each already registered author. the first stage of this operation is therefore to deliver a score to each of them. they are of good will and will devise a way to deliver other certificates.
• some people may sell expertise points by various means. I don't think that anyone will be able to benefit from those points in order to gain anything than spare time

each article will have a status:

• 'raw' (or maybe 'vanilla'?), meaning 'last standard content' (any existing article has this 'raw' status)
• 'unpolluted', meaning 'free from any vandalism'
• 'validated', meaning that 'a Wikipedia commission of people knowing the field validated it'
• 'expertised', meaning that 'a world-known expert of the field checked it ok'

any Wikimedia visitor will be able to state in his profile that, upon reading, [s]he wants to obtain the last version of any article which reached a given status. if there is no such version the immediate 'lower' status will be published (this is recursive)

this will not in any way annoy the reader who does not care about all those darn article status :-) because the default (in the personal profile (preferences) of each registered user or for anonymous ones) will state 'raw'. moreover on each article displayed a new tab will offer access to the various other accessible versions

those various articles status will be expressed by cryptographic seals. [...]

transitions bw statuses:

'unpolluted' status: any administrator will obtain a certificate in order to let him/her give the status 'unpolluted' to any article.

'validated' status: using the existing (today!) set of articles an automagic analysis of the volume of information produced and its relative stability ('unpolluted' status, age and amount of readers) the motivation and efficiency of all their authors can be calculted ('scored'). therefore a software can establish a 'confidence score' for each already registered author.

the administrators will use those scores and deliver certificates to the best authors. those certificates will be qualified by an attribute listing the name of the categories of expertise of their carrier (themes, for example 'mathematics' or 'geography'). those authors, in turn, will recognize some other authors (for example newcomers) as peers. [ ... ]

'expertised' status: in each category this first college of 'wpexperts' will be enabled to form a college in order to elect world-known 'experts' of the field. the CA will produce certificates for them, with an 'expert' attribute storing the pertinent categories names. at first they may be not very interested in participating but as more and more will somewhat do emulation will raise their involvement (Wikipedia will benefit from it).

more at http://www.makarevitch.org/webdsign/ (this is a generic method, the WP discussion is at http://www.makarevitch.org/webdsign/#wikipedia)

each article will have a status:

• 'raw' (or maybe 'vanilla'?), meaning 'last standard content' (any existing article has this 'raw' status)
• 'unpolluted', meaning 'free from any vandalism'
• 'validated', meaning that 'a Wikipedia commission of people knowing the field validated it'
• 'expertised', meaning that 'a world-known expert of the field checked it ok'

any Wikimedia visitor will be able to state in his profile that, upon reading, [s]he wants to obtain the last version of any article which reached a given status. if there is no such version the immediate 'lower' status will be published (this is recursive)

this will not in any way annoy the reader who does not care about all those darn article status :-) because the default (in the personal profile (preferences) of each registered user or for anonymous ones) will state 'raw'. moreover on each article displayed a new tab will offer access to the various other accessible versions

those various articles status will be expressed by cryptographic seals. [...]

transitions bw statuses:

'unpolluted' status: any administrator will obtain a certificate in order to let him/her give the status 'unpolluted' to any article.

'validated' status: using the existing (today!) set of articles an automagic analysis of the volume of information produced and its relative stability ('unpolluted' status, age and amount of readers) the motivation and efficiency of all their authors can be calculted ('scored'). therefore a software can establish a 'confidence score' for each already registered author.

the administrators will use those scores and deliver certificates to the best authors. those certificates will be qualified by an attribute listing the name of the categories of expertise of their carrier (themes, for example 'mathematics' or 'geography'). those authors, in turn, will recognize some other authors (for example newcomers) as peers. [ ... ]

'expertised' status: in each category this first college of 'wpexperts' will be enabled to form a college in order to elect world-known 'experts' of the field. the CA will produce certificates for them, with an 'expert' attribute storing the pertinent categories names. at first they may be not very interested in participating but as more and more will somewhat do emulation will raise their involvement (Wikipedia will benefit from it).

more at http://www.makarevitch.org/webdsign/ (this is a generic method, the WP discussion is at http://www.makarevitch.org/webdsign/#wikipedia)

I would like to be able to do so but cannot devise a way to have this whole thing up without proper authentication. identification is not mandatory, an expert may act anonymously but we need a way to authenticate. do you have any idea about this?

> Don't even make logging-in mandatory.

yep, it isn't

> Let casual users make effortless edits, and depend on the rest of your suggestions to > keep the quality high. Where would you set the default (not-logged-in) profile for > browsing?

'raw' ('vanilla' may be a better term)

> If you go too strict, then you are damaging the wiki nature.

this will not in any way annoy the reader who does not care about all those darn article status :-) because the default (in the personal profile (preferences) of each registered user or for anonymous ones) will state 'raw'. moreover on each article displayed a new tab will offer access to the various other accessible versions

th for the ideas, I modified the published proposal accordingly

the user's preferences may also define which version (bleeding-edge or checked) of a any given article will be displayed by default.

in fact more than one status may be useful, for example unpolluted (no blatant crap)/validated (by Wikipedia experts, automatially detected thanks to the existinf base of articles)/expertized (by world-class experts, elected by Wikipedia experts, if necessary among them).

see http://www.makarevitch.org/webdsign/#wikipediaWiki pedia

I wonder how the authors of such a new 'variant' may access (read? write?) to the Wikipedia databases

each Wikipedia article may have more than one status:

• 'raw', meaning 'last standard content' (any existing article has this 'raw' status)
• 'unpolluted', meaning 'free from any vandalism'
• 'validated', meaning that 'a Wikipedia commission of people knowing the field validated it'
• 'expertised', meaning that 'a world-known expert of the field checked it ok'

any Wikimedia visitor will be able to state in his profile that, upon reading, [s]he wants to obtain the last version of any article which reached a given status. if there is no such version the immediate 'lower' status will be published (this is recursive)

any Wikipedia contributor will carry only one Wikipedia (X.509v3) certificate, which will store many attributes stating various useful parameters.

any administrator will obtain a certificate in order to let him/her give the status 'unpolluted' to any article.

using the existing (today!) set of articles an automagic analysis of the volume of information produced and its relative stability ('unpolluted' status, age and amount of readers) can establish a 'confidence score' for each author. the administrators will use those scores and deliver certificates to the best authors. those certificates will be qualified by an attribute (named 'wpexpert' :-) ) listing the name of the categories of expertise of their carrier (themes, for example 'mathematics' or 'geography').

more info at http://www.makarevitch.org/webdsign/

• avoid annoying anyone who likes the way Wikipedia works now
• satisfy anyone who prefers reviewed articles

there is at least an approach for publishing various insurances on the Web:

• origin (answer to the question who wrote this?),
• integrity (do I read the exact information written or a tampered version?),
• non-repudiation (can the author negate being the author?),
• opinions (what do people trusted by me think of it?),
• timestamping (when was this information published?),
• automatic discovery of similar tastes (may I obtain the list of all informations new for me and appreciated by other Web user emitting opinions similar to mines?),
• layering (may I automatically access preferably/only to information validated by a set of friends?)
• ...

the detail is at http://www.makarevitch.org/webdsign/ (potential non-intrusive application to Wikipedia: http://www.makarevitch.org/webdsign/#wikipedia)

• avoid annoying anyone who likes the way Wikipedia works now
• satisfy anyone who prefers reviewed articles

there is at least an approach for publishing various insurances on the Web:

• origin (answer to the question who wrote this?),
• integrity (do I read the exact information written or a tampered version?),
• non-repudiation (can the author negate being the author?),
• opinions (what do people trusted by me think of it?),
• timestamping (when was this information published?),
• automatic discovery of similar tastes (may I obtain the list of all informations new for me and appreciated by other Web user emitting opinions similar to mines?),
• layering (may I automatically access preferably/only to information validated by a set of friends?)
• ...

the detail is at http://www.makarevitch.org/webdsign/ (potential non-intrusive application to Wikipedia: http://www.makarevitch.org/webdsign/#wikipedia)

beware: chrt'ing a badly implemented application may provoke a kernel hang

--
WebDSign: thrust the Web by trust

the machines seem more snappy than with a 2.4

hints: IBM X31 laptop under Debian