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Three Mile Island Memories
theodp writes "Thirty years after the partial nuclear core meltdown at Three Mile Island, Robert Cringely describes the terrible TMI user interface, blaming a confluence of bad design decisions — some made by Congress — for making the accident vastly worse. While computers could be used to monitor the reactor, US law prohibited using computers to directly control nuclear power plants — men would do that. So, when the (one) computer noticed a problem, it would set off audible and visual alarms, and send a problem description to a line printer. Simple, except the computer noticed 700 things wrong in the first few minutes of the TMI accident, causing the one audible alarm to ring continuously until it was shut off as useless. The one visual alarm blinked for days, indicating nothing useful. And the print queue was quickly flooded with 700 error reports followed by thousands of updates and corrections, making it almost instantly hours behind. The operators had to guess at what the problem was."
See, See. UI is important!!!!
(Stares complacently at his Mac)
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Obama's 'new regulatory framework for the 20th century' crowd: Choke on that please.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
So the problem with Three Mile Island (TMI) was Too Much Information (TMI). But I didn't read the article, as that would have been TMI.
If you read Cringely's article, make sure you also read through the comments, as there are several really insightful threads (and Bob says as much in his replies) posted by readers. Specifically the comments that talk about the fact that while the TMI design and control room layout was extremely bad, it was really an incompetent operations staff (or one operator) who did have the skills/training to kick the non-technical managers out of the room and use their expertise to get the situation under control.
And because of this insignificant little incident that killed nobody, and had little to no effect on the health of people near it, nuclear power, a safe, clean, mature power generation technology, was (and continues to be) drastically set back. It's stuff like this that makes me worried that humanity as a whole will be just too incredibly stupid to make it through this century without killing ourselves in one of many ways.
Never has the gravity of an accident (of any kind) been so exaggerated. Before or after.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Like the old saying goes... Never send a man to do a machine's job.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
While computers could be used to monitor the reactor, US law prohibited using computers to directly control nuclear power plants -- men would do that.
Given the state of automated control back in those days, that's not really a bad policy. Even today, aircraft autopilots (triply redundant) are not reliable enough so that Boeing requires that pilots must be able to disconnect them and fly manually.
Granted, UIs have improved immensely since mid 1960's technology. The 700 alarm problem is easily mitigated with modern SCADA systems that can distill such volumes of data and pinpoint a few possible root causes. But I don't think you want you'd want to automate the whole thing and leave it in the hands of the same, poorly trained operators they had in 1979.
Have gnu, will travel.
... of safety-critical systems, they do things like shut off the engines on a plane in mid-flight due to a sensor malfunction. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Our President at the time, Jimmy Carter, was also a micro-manager and a former nuclear engineer:
U.S. Navy reactor operators, the sort who served under Jimmy Carter in the 1950s,
Is not and never was a nuclear engineer, much less did he command a nuclear sub. He served as an enlisted man on several diesel-electric subs and started, but did not complete, a Naval class in nuclear engineering. He resigned from the Navy (as a lieutenant) before any nuclear subs were commissioned.
The FEMA guys were just plain stupid.
NO U
If the alarm goes off in a nuclear plant, operating procedure should say: Check briefly if the computer is acting up, and then shut the whole frickin' plant down. Why wasn't it done? Let me guess: It costs a whole bunch of money. So, the accident happened due to greed.
U.S. Navy reactor operators, the sort who served under Jimmy Carter in the 1950s, were selected primarily for their temperament. ... their Navy job--as at TMI--was to follow the manual. All knowledge was inside the book. So knowing the book was everything. Unfortunately knowing the book isn't the same as knowing the reactor. So knowing the book was everything. Unfortunately knowing the book isn't the same as knowing the reactor.
No. Just fucking no. There's a significant (and necessary) emphasis on following procedures and getting the books out for any planned change to the plant to make sure you're doing things right. But Cringely makes it sound like nuclear operators are just slightly trained mouth-breathers that only know how to look things up in the book and do what it tells them. I can't speak for the civilian training, but the Navy does NOT do things that way.
When something goes wrong, they depend on you having enough internalized knowledge about the plant, its controls, and its indicator systems to work out what's going on and (if necessary) do something about it. Once you've got stuff at least marginally under control, *then* you get the books out to check the applicable procedures to make sure you haven't forgotten something, and to figure out how to recover from whatever happened without causing any more problems.
The Navy puts a lot of effort put into making sure their operators know how and why things work the way they do. They would never have got to the 21st century with the track record they have if all they did was train people to look at the book.
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
Those days Congress passed a law banning computers from controlling the plant. Now days people think PBMRs are safer. Clearly a better solution is to allow engineers free reign, but require much more stringent reviews of proposed designs. Like the RSA cryptography challenges.
This is just plain bad design, and not Congress' fault.
If this alarming system--with the same crappy design--had been "directly connected" to the controls, god knows what would have happened.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
I wasn't there so I can't say Cringely is wrong about the government regulation of nuclear power, however, I have worked in the semiconductor industry which utilizes some of the deadliest chemicals known to man and their are mandated regulations from various government agencies, EPA, OSHA, etc., that result in the controls, interlocks, and containment systems used to make the industry safe. I'm also pretty sure that the issue in Bhopal was more a lack of regulation than a lack of respect for the dangers. There should have been powerful laws and inspectors to shut down the plant before it killed thousands.
Where we both do agree is on the belief that we can expect more Bhopal and economic melt down events due to bean counter management. Over the past 20 years I've noticed a managerial shift towards a focus on cutting costs and less of a focus on the technology and science behind the manufactured products. In the past two years I've engaged in heated debates with peers and managers over the purpose and focus of engineering resources. Its seems that decision makers are forgetting that the core of a technology based manufacturing corporation is the technology not the cutting of fixed costs by reducing head count, wages, service contracts, etc. Accounting and business management are tools to support the core skills, they are not the core themselves. When accounting and business management undermines the ability of a technology based business to develop and manufacture the core technology of their business you can expect a gradual degradation of the business until it is no longer viable.
"Computers! Error! Component Failure! Congress! Unpredicatble! etc, etc, etc. Excuses, excuses.
How hard can it be to monitor the temperature of a nuclear reactor? Apparently, this task is somehow beyond the competence of nuclear plant supervisors for some obscure reason. Blaming regulation is beside the point. A first year undergraduate engineering student would be able to build a reliable temperature monitor.
May the Maths Be with you!
It was Wolverine
Uh, I think the guy is needlessly cynical. I know a lot of Navy guys that run our nukes and, they do know them inside and out.
This is my sig.
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What are you spouting about?
The possibility of bad regulation doesn't really impugn the very concept of regulation.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
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Fast breeders have too many inherent risks. A primary one being: the corrosive molten sodium as a primary coolant must transfer the heat to water (the secondary coolant) via a heat exchanger. "Sodium reacts exothermically with water ... large pieces will explode." Sodium
"As of 2006, all large-scale FBR power stations have been liquid metal fast reactors (LMFBR) cooled by liquid sodium." - Breeder reactors
Just step away from the facts and assume the position. You are going to be rehabilitated so you can increase your herd stampede skills, and improve your fear mongering tactics. We will make you into a more compliant citizen...just another brick in the wall.
On a side note, when the plant was operating, the fishing near the cooling water outlet pipe in the river was great!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
No mod points but your comment is insightful. I have worked with 3 ex nuclear sub people, one an engineer officer in the USN, one ditto in the RN, and one seaman officer. They were all trained to the Nth degree to do all the right things automatically, but had enough theory to be able to analyse and develop solutions to novel problems. Ships do not run, and wars are not won, by blind adherence to operating procedures.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Technology is more than the machine.
If you don't know what is going on and you are clearly not in control your system has failed - catastrophically.
The TMI cleanup started in August 1979 and officially ended in December 1993, having cost around US$975 million. From 1985 to 1990 almost 100 tons of radioactive fuel were removed from the site. However, the contaminated cooling water that leaked into the containment building had seeped into the building's concrete, leaving the radioactive residue impossible to remove. TMI-2 had been online only three months but now had a ruined reactor vessel and a containment building that was unsafe to walk in -- it has since been permanently closed. Three Mile Island Unit 2 was too badly damaged and contaminated to resume operations. The reactor was gradually deactivated and mothballed in a lengthy process completed in 1993. Three Mile Island accident
A ten year - billion-dollar - clean-up can't be described as insignificant.
Shippingport emphasized engineering, management, financial strength.
Projects realistically scaled to the needs, experience and resources of their sponsors.
Those lessons had been forgotten. "The Meltdown" was symptomatic of problems throughout the industry.
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You sir - how good are you on thermocouple alloys that don't mind neutrons and containments which can withstand not only neutrons but variable corrosive conditions at high temperatures? It's not just a matter of sticking a stainless steel jacketed thermocouple into an exhaust manifold.
If I had a dollar for every poster on Slashdot who has thought some area of engineering was simple due to simple ignorance on -almost always a his - part, I'd have....quite a lot of dollars.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
In both cases (Chernobyl and TMI) procedure was violated or nonexistent for what the operators were trying to do. In Chernobyl's case, operational procedure was violated in several instances to conduct a test for which no procedure existed. In TMIs case, procedure was violated in tagging out pumps leading to a problem in which there was no procedure for diagnosis.
Neither plant would have been "inherently" unsafe or dangerous if operated within their design envelopes under established procedure. Once the humans violated procedure, their actions made their equipment unsafe.
I can look out my window and see the cooling towers. I'm about as close as you can get since I live on the river about 1.3 miles to the still active Reactor 1.
I figure if something happens, I'd rather go instantly than be walking around with a third arm for the rest of my life!
So you are advocating unregulated, free-for-all nuclear power? Ha ha, great idea. No doubt the free market will find a nice cheap place to put the nuclear waste, too.
God, I wish I had mod points for you.
... how much nuclear power is involved with Centralia? Ummmm.... NONE! A natural resource (accidentally ignited by humans) has destroyed a town completely. Personally, I put Centralia on a higher level of "disaster" than I do TMI.
I live about 15 miles away from TMI and I have for 20 years. I've never felt unsafe or felt like I was in danger. People seems to enjoy comparing TMI to being a potential Chernobyl, but there's simply no way that the two can even be compared.
On the other hand, head up to Centralia, PA where the whole town has been demolished because of a fire that has been running through the ignition of a natural, coal vein. A fire ignited some coal, and now the whole town has been abandoned, homes have been razed, there are very few buildings to speak of, there are dangerous leaks of carbon monoxide and other lethal gases, the ground has swelled and cracked from the heat, and this fire is expected to last 250 years.
Now
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Exactly right, this reactor type is inherently dangerous, and moreover, you can't overcome something inherently dangerous with procedure.
I'm not surprised at all that the Three Mile Island breakdown was ultimately caused by government. Legislation tends to have unforeseen effects like this. I'm sure the builders would've loved to put in computer control and this tragedy would've never happened. When, when will we learn, when?
Government, get out of the way.
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
As I tire of pointing out and people never tire of not understanding, lack of regulation does not mean free-for-all, might is right or whatever.
An unregulated nuclear industry does not mean plants can pour waste in other people's property. Since governments regulate commons they must either take responsibility to ensure they are not destroyed or privatize them to internalize the externalities.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
As Einstein said, the very definition of insanity is to repeat the same action and expect a different outcome.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
There was a partial core meltdown. That, no matter how you choose to define it, it NOT insignificant.
Elizabethtown College - about 7 miles from TMI as the crow flies (or the wind blows).
My sister went to school there, and after two and a half semesters there she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.
Lets rewind... The morning of the accident people reported a metallic taste in the air. Turns out that of the gas released, radioactive iodine accounted for an estimated "8 - 12% of the total gases released, implying a minimum of 1 million iodine curies". See: TMI Accident.
I don't believe that people were not harmed by the radioactive release. In fact, stating that it "had little to no effect on the health of people" is a lie. Any arguments based on that lie are faulty.
I am for nuclear power, and I agree that letting bean counters manage a project like that is the wrong way. I'm in agreement with all of the other people here who think that engineers should be listened to. They are the ones with the knowledge after all...
As I tire of pointing out and people never tire of not understanding, lack of regulation does not mean free-for-all, might is right or whatever.
An unregulated nuclear industry does not mean plants can pour waste in other people's property. Since governments regulate commons they must either [A] take responsibility to ensure they are not destroyed or [B] privatize them to internalize the externalities.
Umm, actually A does mean regulation, contradicting your assumption, and B without regulation does mean a "might is right" free-for-all.
Are you sure you don't think the nuclear industry should have government oversight? Would you be willing to send your kids to a school next to a nuke plant owned by AIG and run by Enron?
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Maybe they do understand but don't agree. Privatizing land is no way to protect it from toxic or nuclear waste. Ownership of land is a handy legal contrivance, but let's not take it too far. There is a finite amount of Earth for all the people that have lived, live now, and will ever live. Individuals live relatively briefly and have no right to carelessly dump nuclear waste that will far outlive them, regardless of some piece of paper. Ultimately our right to bury nuclear waste comes from exercising diligence and doing it in a way that won't cause any accidents for a very long time.
Very few people seem to realize Einstein was proved wrong there. Quantum mechanics does produce different results for the same action.
But it's amusing to watch stupid people quote Einstein for their own idiotic purposes, nonetheless.
All very well and good, but how are you going to tie quantum theory back into the financial sector's desperately bad regulation, smart boy?
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
My sister went to school there, and after two and a half semesters there she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.
That's nothing. My grandad went to Lourdes and only six months later he got leukemia. I want to know when people are going to take a stand against the unshielded holy radiation that causes such damage to humans.
I'm posting this AC because I just know it's going to be marked troll, and you're going to post something like "she's dead now, you jackass" as though that's relevant to the debate. But if you read the Wikipedia article you linked to, several studies have found no evidence of any increase in death due to TMI, especially compelling with the observations that cancer deaths were highest in the area with lowest fallout, and that the area around TMI has high levels of radon and so high background radiation anyway.
Your sister may have died from cancer (I don't know) and that's certainly a tragedy. Nevertheless, this is not the fault of the nuclear industry, but one of those pieces of shit that happen depressingly regularly in this amoral, godless universe. As a someone who is an engineer or an allied trade (you respect engineers after all, so you must be one) you should know statistics well enough to accept that.
>Operators who understood what they were doing would have checked what needed to be checked
What needed to be checked was the level of water in the core.
There was no instrument for that. I'm not kidding. See _Safeware_, by Nancy Leveson.
(It's a harder problem than it sounds like, if you think about the conditions in the core, but still ...)
The operators, deprived of an accurate picture of what was happening, followed their training, which was to prevent overfilling the cooling system.
The UI failed on functionality, and even if it had succeeded there, ease of use saves time and bandwidth in a crisis.
Almost all big industrial processes are dangerous, it's true. Even with solar panels, people will fall off roofs when they install them. It's sometimes hard to assess benefits to whom versus risks to who else?
Still, was the TMI release safe just like the air was declared safe by the EPA in NYC after 9/11?
"EPA Misled Public on 9/11 Pollution: White House ordered false assurances on air quality, report says "
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0823-03.htm
"""
Rep. Jerry Nadler, a Manhattan Democrat, called for a Justice Department investigation. "That the White House instructed EPA officials to downplay the health impact of the World Trade Center contaminants due to 'competing considerations' at the expense of the health and lives of New York City residents is an abomination," he said in a news release. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said in an interview it was "understandable that in the midst of a crisis the White House did not want the EPA to sound alarmist." But, he warned, "If the public loses faith that things are safe when the government says so, we'll have done more damage than a pointed statement the week after 9/11 would have."
"""
As to there being no deaths related to TMI, that's not what these people say: ... In fact, the most reliable studies were conducted by local residents like Jane Lee and Mary Osborne, who went door-to-door in neighborhoods where the fallout was thought to be worst. Their surveys showed very substantial plagues of cancer, leukemia, birth defects, respiratory problems, hair loss, rashes, lesions and much more. ... Gundersen, a leading technical expert on nuclear engineering, says: ... But the Big Lie remains officially in tact. Expect to hear all week that TMI was "a success story" because "no one was killed." But in mere moments that brand new reactor morphed from a $900 million asset to a multi-billion-dollar liability. It could happen to any atomic power plant, now, tomorrow and into the future. Meanwhile, the death toll from America's worst industrial catastrophe continues to rise. More than ever, it is shrouded in official lies and desecrated by a reactor-pushing "renaissance" hell-bent on repeating the nightmare on an even larger scale.
"30 Years and Counting: People Died at Three Mile Island "
http://www.counterpunch.org/wasserman03242009.html
"""
Using unsubstantiated estimates of how much radiation was released, the government issued average doses allegedly received by people in the region, which it assured the public were safe. But the estimates were utterly meaningless, among other things ignoring the likelihood that high doses of concentrated fallout could come down heavily on specific areas.
"When I correctly interpreted the containment pressure spike and the doses measured in the environment after the TMI accident, I proved that TMI's releases were about one hundred times higher than the industry and the NRC claim, in part because the containment leaked. This new data supports the epidemiology of Dr. Steve Wing and proves that there really were injuries from the accident. New reactor designs are also effected, as the NRC is using its low assumed release rates to justify decreases in emergency planning and containment design."
"""
Or here:
"Startling Revelations About Three Mile Island Raise New Doubts Over Nuclear Plant Safety "
http://www.counterpunch.org/sturgis04032009.html
"""
The evidence that people, animals and plants near TMI were exposed to high levels of radiation in the 1979 disaster is not merely anecdotal. While government studies of the disaster as well as a number of independent researchers assert the incident caused no harm, other surveys and studie
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Indirectly, it caused hundreds of deaths.
By displacing coal-fired power, the two reactors on site were saving 100 lives per year, based on the Office of Technology Assessment figures for premature deaths from coal burning. Those people, who would have lived if the reactors had stayed in operation, are dead now.
So you don't think anybody would try to rush things along and end up with their own little Chernobyl?
Sort of hard to internalize that or clean it up after the fact.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Sounds like QA dropped the ball on testing the system before deployment.
>the average containment vessel would have failed
Citation needed?
There were overpressure spikes, but I don't remember them being remotely large enough to bust open a foot of reinforced concrete.
Simple, I've developed a Theory of General Financial Relativity that ties it all together perfectly.
.......oh.......hang on a minute.....
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
You should take the spirit behind your Grammar Nazi .sig and apply it to the post directly above yours. Good luck!
"3 January 1961
The world's first nuclear-related fatalities occurred following a reactor explosion at the National Reactor Testing Station in Idaho Falls, Idaho. One navy technician and two army technicians, were killed, with radioactivity "largely confined" (words of John A. McCone, Director of the Atomic Energy Commission) to the reactor building. The three men were killed as they moved fuel rods in a "routine" preparation for the reactor start-up. One technician was blown to the ceiling of the containment dome and impaled on a control rod. His body remained there until it was taken down six days later. The men were so heavily exposed to radiation that their hands had to be buried separately with other radioactive waste, and their bodies were interred in lead coffins. Another incident three weeks later (on 25 January) resulted in a release of radiation into the atmosphere."
http://www.lutins.org/nukes.html
Isn't it funny what people choose to remember...
They Live, We Sleep
Why don't we just fill a bunch of concrete containers with the stuff and drop them into a subduction zone? That way the waste will just get eaten by the earth. The bonus is that it will be below the water table out of which we drink.
SRSLY.
But the result is a fluke, according to TFA:
What it does is demonstrate exactly why the public does not trust nuclear energy. Sure, they say the technology is so strong now that we are capable of building an incredibly safe nuclear plant. But people are always being told how safe it is before pretty much any man-made disaster. Here on /. we spend a lot of time talking about how we cannot trust the government nor big companies, and now complaining when they don't?
Whether the technology is all that safe is perhaps something of a moot point. Wherever there are humans involved, there is scope for human error. Again TFA makes this clear. There was nothing wrong with the available technology, the failures were all human.
I used to work in the nuclear power plant operator training industry. Believe me, whatever else those operators were, they were not cheap. The CEO could not skimp on salaries and hire idiots. In fact, in a time when $40K was an excellent salary, the training costs per operator was more than $1 million.
On the other hand, there were cultural obstacles. In Europe (Sweden), they hired engineers with masters degrees to become nuclear plant operators. In the USA, they were mostly high school grads who were union members and promoted from running older coal plants. Union politics, not merit decided who got promoted. They were not the best and brightest. Of course in Sweden they also attract the best and brightest to be civil servants. Can you imagine that happening here?
There are always plenty of suggestions as to where society should apply its best and brightest. It is much harder to place the worst and dumbest. Consider the bottom 25%. They have to have jobs. No matter where you assign them, the public will in some way be depending on those jobs being done well. So filling jobs becomes less of a question of rational allocation of resources, but more a matter of attractiveness and recruiting.
A plant operator must stand there and do nothing but monitor year after year, yet react swiftly and accurately in those rare seconds of pure terror, and then have the whole world second guess how well they did it. In addition, they have to do shift work for 24x7 operation. Most people think that it is a hell of an unattractive job. I think that the plant owners do a hell of a job trying to find and retain the best people they can get, and to enrich the jobs to make them less boring. It takes much more than deep pockets to succeed.
So you tell me. You play CEO and tell me how would you convince Google engineers to quit Google and become operators, and how many of the lower quartiles you would assign to invent Google. Convince those bright college students that they don't want to be environmental scientists, but nuclear power plant operators instead.
An unregulated nuclear industry does not mean plants can pour waste in other people's property.
And what happens if due to some accident they do spread a load of waste over other peoples property? Sure you can send them to PMITA prison but that doesn't fix anything. Sure you can sue them into bankrupcy but they are unlikely to have anything like the money to pay for the damage they caused.
Since governments regulate commons they must either take responsibility to ensure they are not destroyed
Which requires them to 1: punish those who deliberately act to destroy them and 2: REGULATE actions that have an unacceptable chance of accidently destroying them.
or privatize them to internalize the externalities.
Which is kinda impractical when the commons in question is the air we all have to live in and breathe.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Fun fact: cows in a field two miles away from Three Mile Island got more radiation from Chernobyl.
I have read superfund documents where a single person probably earning a typical salary caused far, far more damage than their lifetime salary (like tens of millions). You also have to realize, the legal system is extremely costly, we are better off just keeping things out of it except when they are very important.
Ummm...yeah, really safe...ummmm...yeah...so, how do you account for this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents
Or, perhaps, this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster
Rather selective, aren't we? Nuclear power...yeah, real safe, so they say...
And let's not even get started on waste problems, etc.
With luck, several fusion reactors will hopefully alleviate some of these problems...
subducting plates build mountains, i think they can break open a concrete container. even if the waste were to subduct, what's to stop it from floating up into a pluton and shooting out a volcano?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/02/Subduction01.jpg
Why don't we just fill a bunch of concrete containers with the stuff and drop them into a subduction zone?
Because we're going to want it back later.
As usual, as soon as the term "nuclear waste" comes up, people lose all rational foresight. The stuff comes out of the reactor with a great deal of residual energy (hence its continuing danger). We just can't/don't currently take advantage of it.
If someone were to come up with a safe way to permanently dispose of nuclear waste, he wouldn't be doing the future any favors.
The operators, deprived of an accurate picture of what was happening, followed their training, which was to prevent overfilling the cooling system.
They were not deprived of an accurate picture, their instruments were actually lying to them
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
It was a *far* worse accident than Chernobyl. Unlike Chernobyl, US reactor design contained the accident.
For extra credit, compare the total release at TMI to to what a coal plant releases in a regular day of operation.
hawk
Yes, and trying to understand quantum mechanics drives me insane.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
to adapt a suggestion given by a libertarian acquaintance years ago . . .
Never mind government regulation. Require a half-trillion dollar liability policy. The insurance company will regulate far tighter and more effectively than the government.
hawk, who isn't advocating this, but finds it an interesting proposal
You are aware, of course, that under american and british law, this results in unlimited shareholder liability, aren't you?
Or are you just parroting ignorant claims about how corporate law and liability works.
AFAIK, there has *never* been a time or an anglo-american jurisdiction in which a corporation inadequately capitalized for the business which is entering does not leave its shareholders liable.
But then, I'm just an attorney.
hawk, esq., not offering this as legal advice. If you need that, pay for it, rather than relying on the ignorance posted on slashdot
Where's the smoking gun? Where's the radiation? Cancer clusters and the other observations have no relevance, if Three Mile Island didn't leak significant radiation. I notice several of your cited authors make claims about high levels of radiation near the plant, but I don't see any measurements of that supposed radiation.
AIG was an insurance company.
"It appears that every few months, since 1990, a new estimate is made of core debris, often with little relationship to the previous estimate. Estimates range form 608.8 kg to 1,322 kg... This is rather unsettling....," he concluded. "The still unanswered questions are therefore: precisely how much uranium is left in the core, and how much uranium can collect in the bottom of the reactor to initiate re-criticality."
It would seem that the effort to bring the reactor core to a benign state remains an ongoing process.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
That's certainly a compelling argument, I'm surprised I've never heard it made by nuclear power supporters. If there really is a surplus of military-grade materials that need to be disposed of, I'm all for safely converting it for civilian use first. I know nothing about nuclear science or politics, so I have no idea if it's realistic or not. If I ever find out for sure, it would dramatically change my support of nuclear power.
According to this video's blurb:
Simi Valley California was the site of the worst nuclear disaster in U.S. history in 1959, and the amounts of radiation leaked to the environment and atomosphere were more than 240 times that of the accident at 3-Mile Island.
It has often been argued that the reason for the decline of nuclear power in the United States was because of the environmental movement in the late 1970s. It has also been argued, however, that 3 Mile Island was a wake up call to the private investors in the US who noticed that a 2 billion dollar nuclear plant asset could be turned into a 1 billion dollar cleanup legal liability in the space of 30 minutes. Of the dozens of new nuclear plants slated for construction in the 1970s, only a few were stopped because of environmentalist action. The others quietly folded up because investors said "Wow, no thanks" after seeking what kind of risk might be involved.
Simple, except the computer noticed 700 things wrong in the first few minutes of the TMI accident, causing the one audible alarm to ring continuously until it was shut off as useless. The one visual alarm blinked for days, indicating nothing useful. And the print queue was quickly flooded with 700 error reports followed by thousands of updates and corrections, making it almost instantly hours behind. The operators had to guess at what the problem was.
Sounds like Nagios at my work :-)
That is a false dilemma. We don't have to use either coal or nuclear power. Both have been heavily subsidized by government in various ways for various special interest reasons:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power
"Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security is a 1982 book by Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, prepared originally as a Pentagon study, and re-released in 2001 following the September 11 attacks. The book argues that domestic energy infrastructure is very vulnerable to disruption, by accident or malice, often even more so than imported oil. According to the authors, a resilient energy system is feasible, costs less, works better, is favoured in the market, but is rejected by U.S. policy. In the preface to the 2001 edition, Lovins explains that these themes are still very current."
There are lots of alternatives. Nothing is perfect, of course.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
That's a very interesting question. I don't know the answer. But is it perhaps because some people don't want to know?
http://www.tmi-cmn.org/tmiphf.htm
"A common thread that ran through all concerns about the accident was the lack of adequate and accessible data about radiation levels during and after the accident. Trust was another significant issue. Misinformation supplied by the plant operator, GPU, damaged community relations. The NRC and other agencies did not handle the situation in ways that allayed public concerns."
It looks like a modern geiger counter costs about $500. Maybe *every* person around a nuclear plant should be given one?
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
So? How was Einstein proven wrong? As I read it that just means that quantum mechanics is insane.
Then no one would do it at all, which is, in my view, not a desirable outcome.
According to reports the accident was caused because; while the PORV was still open the signal light available to the operator showed it to be closed, as it only showed the presence or absence of current, not that the valve was actually closed. Therefore it was a non-computer display failure, the 'SEVEN HUNDRED things wrong' occurred as a consequences of operator action not the cause of it.
.. But that signal was situated behind the seven-foot-high instrument panels .. and did not do so as they attempted to cope with the flurry of confusing signals they were already"
"The operators might have determined that the valve was open by looking at a pressure indicator for the reactor-coolant drain tank
It looks like a modern geiger counter costs about $500. Maybe *every* person around a nuclear plant should be given one?
Geiger counters only work when a person uses them properly. For legal purposes, you may need more (a standard procedure, witnesses, hard to counterfeit paper record of observations, etc). Automated sampling is better.
The TMI systems worked so well that even in the face of a core meltdown (however small) no one was harmed and virtually no radiation released. Yet, despite this, the media used lies and myths about TMI to prevent nuclear based power from ever growing to be the dominate form of power generation in the US.
Truly a true crime against humanity (and the climate, Mr Green).
"I'm not surprised at all that the Three Mile Island breakdown was ultimately caused by government"
Not at all, it would have been prevented by designing a signal light that showed the actual state of the PORV instead of the presence or absence of current, and not hiding the pressure indicator behind the seven-foot-high instrument panels. And given what I know about how software is designed, a nuclear power plant is the last place you would want one it. From warships going dead-in-the-water, 'Internet' viruses causing blackouts and patients being fried in radiation therapy machines, I rest my case. Small embedded systems with multiple backups and known failure modes is the safest.
'Just below the plant's control room, two electricians were trying to seal air leaks .. They were using strips of spongy foam rubber to seal the leaks. They were also using candles .. by observing how the flame was affected by escaping air'
"A first year undergraduate engineering student would be able to build a reliable temperature monitor"
.. :)
I recall seeing an ICI documentary where the operator used a telescope to observe a mercury thermometer on top of a pressure vessel, which was producing ammonia iirc
If it was adequately capitalised then the company wouldn't have gone under. Ergo, any company that goes under was inadequately capitalised.
And yet they certainly don't "lift the veil" in most, let alone all, cases of corporate insolvency.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Agreed! Especially considering that coal plants have required the permanent relocation of people due to pollution even when they are operating normally.
Non-sequiturs should not be modded "Insightful". AIG's insurance operations are *not* what got them into trouble.
- T
What are you talking about? A credit default swap is basically an insurance policy.
AIG?
Of course, 'completely unregulated framework' and 'corporation' are pretty incompatible.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
>If it was adequately capitalised then the company wouldn't have gone under.
No. That's just plain wrong, and has nothing to do with business or law.
Adequate capitalization has to do with adequate for the risk being undertaken, not the outcome. This is a very well developed body of law.
As a very vague first order test (this is not the actual test), would another business extend it credit given the risks it faces and its capitalization. If a bank will extend it unsecured credit, it's probably sufficiently capitalized.
hawk, esq
OK, this I've never seen before. A hard-core libertarian has proposed too much regulation :)
This guy was in the "government isn't necessary" group of hard-core libertarians, who really wanted to form a "libertarian free state" in Antarctica . . .
hawk
What are you talking about? A credit default swap is basically an insurance policy.
Not really. For the issuer of the CDS, it offloads risk to a third party, but for the investor, it's much like commodities speculation, including in particular the futures strategy of simultaneously going long and short as a hedge. Note the bullet in the wiki page, "in the United States CDS contracts are generally subject to mark to market accounting, introducing income statement and balance sheet volatility that would not be present in an insurance contract", emphasis mine.
That being said, DAldredge was responding to "The insurance company will regulate far tighter and more effectively than the government." AIUI, AIG's insurance arm is separate from its investments arm, and appears to have been run responsibly and profitably. In this way, bringing up the AIG fiasco in response to hawk's post was a non-sequitur.
Also, I disagree with hawk's assertion in this case. Private business works well for many things, but I wouldn't want nuclear safety ultimately left solely to profit-motivated entities. Government regulation and oversight (if done properly) has a crucial role in nuclear safety.
- T
You forget the monetary unit in the US is produced by the Federal Reserve, a central bank with a monopoly on the issuance of currency, which is ultimately responsible for inflating this latest ( and other ) bubbles with easy credit.
Hardly a laissez-faire monetary system. If the US had sound money and free banking this monstrous bubble and it's 'pop' would not have been possible.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
The new x-men movie is really bad if it has to throw in three-mile island.
I really didn't mean my statement at a quantum scale. But I know you knew what I meant and I know it was just meant as a comeback.
Good one, there, made me look like an idiot. =)
Send your spendthrift head of state this
The TMI disaster came within a fraction of being as bad as chernobyl. There was a hydrogen explosion when the zirconium cladding of the fuel rods in the exposed core reached the ignition temperature and burned in an atmosphere of pressurized steam. The hydrogen explosion blew the top off of the reactor vessel and caused a shock wave that came within 10% of the ultimate yield strength of the concrete containment dome. If the dome had fractured, there would have been a thermite like fire of burning zirconium and uranium that would have volatilized the entire core and sent a plume of tons of uranium oxide dust that would have contaminated all of eastern Pennsylvania, upstate New York and the rest of New England. Luckily, the dome did not fracture and the fire burned out when it exhausted the oxygen in the dome.