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Nuclear Safety Push To Be Softened After US Objections
mdsolar writes with news that the U.S. objects to a proposal to amend the Convention on Nuclear Safety put forward by Switzerland. The United States looks set to succeed in watering down a proposal for tougher legal standards aimed at boosting global nuclear safety, according to senior diplomats. Diplomatic wrangling will come to a head at a 77-nation meeting in Vienna next month that threatens to expose divisions over required safety standards and the cost of meeting them, four years after the Fukushima disaster in Japan. Switzerland has put forward a proposal to amend the Convention on Nuclear Safety (CNS), arguing stricter standards could help avoid a repeat of Fukushima, where an earthquake and tsunami sparked triple nuclear meltdowns, forced more than 160,000 people to flee nearby towns and contaminated water, food and air.
The first thing would be tougher rules for nuclear site selection.
While it restricts the allowed area for a nuclear site, there'd be almost no additional cost for the site construction and maintenance (unless it's a really remote location). This would already help a lot.
we are the devil.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't fukushima's nuclear plant already breaking Japan's law? Why would then more regulation even help the problem? Enforcing current regulations on older plants should take priority over more red tape and bureaucracy.
I think current regulations are good enough. Making more will only lead to keeping the old unsafer plants online even longer when they should be replaced.
For both Chernobyl and Fukushima using obsolete plants made the incidents, which could have been preventable, even worse.
You don't complain about modern car safety if someone dies in an oldtimer car crash.
It's too bad that neither mdsolar's summary nor the article he linked to mention what change was proposed. Some changes may be good, others bad. No way to know about this one without knowing just what is was that someone wanted to change.
You know, mdsolar, you'd probably sell more by engaging in discussions on forums more targeted to your market and just answering questions people have have solar power systems. That would include forums that have a lot of people who want to be "off the grid" or less reliant on the grid, prepper forums for example. Also certain home renovation forums would have people who might be interested in buying. Pitching the general concept here, especially through negative FUD about your competitors, is kind of a waste of your time.
I can't think of a reason ANYONE would want the nuclear power generation industry to be less safe than it possibly could be, except where it meant that designs with potential flaws & faults would be blocked from sale to countries requiring lowest possible cost nuclear power. Blocking increased safety simply sounds like someone wants their income protected.
If current regulatory practices means that there are ways of getting round safety, then they MUST be rewritten and/or extended. Anything less I consider a dereliction of duty to the people who would live near nuclear plants.
and welcome TTIP. Thanks, US of A.
And at least 103,000 returned. There is never a time or place for sensationalism.
The summary for this story is completely useless since it doesn't give any specific information on what the proposed regulations would change or what the US changed about them. I read the linked article and it's more of the same, with no actual facts about anything, just empty quotes and Fukushima references. This isn't a story, it's just FUD.
... though I have no reason to believe it's anything but self-serving, sometimes rather egregiously so (eg. the ICC). But I digress.
"Tougher standards", "more rules", "stricter red tape" and so on are the typical bureaucrat's solution to just about anything, and it never really works. Moreso if the rules already were so strict that people found it easier to just ignore them and live with the shame than "do it properly". It appears that some things in Fukushima didn't work out too well because of "creativity in the paperwork". It also appears that the paperwork surrounding the US nuclear industry is less than perfect, so that would handily explain their stance. I'd much rather make sure that the rules are both sufficient for a reasonable safety situation and not too onerous to follow in the long run, so that they'll actually get followed. That last bit can be a lifesaver.
Think about it. Do you rather have the toughest rules nobody follows, or perhaps would you opt for not quite as tough rules that do get followed?
If it is necessary to change the rules so they can be followed, well, go ahead. But don't forget that to achieve anything through rules those rules cannot afford to get ignored, and that sooner is the rules' fault rather than a lack of enforcement. Just saying "we must toughen up the rules" is insufficient and easily counter-productive. IOW, and this'll be familiar to officers: "Never give an order you know won't be obeyed."
The Convention on Nuclear Safety (CNS) is a treaty-ish pile of broad and anti-specific foofy diplo-language. Its purpose is not to share or agree on a single iota of practical knowledge, though over time a tiny bit might creep into it. It exists to permit and encourage the ratification of itself by as many parties as possible, and in this, it is like those "bad luck if you do not forward me" chain letters.
The Swiss proposal said in effect, stop all the music and implement every feature ever conceived to make new plant designs safer, to every existing plant. Somehow. Even if it is redundant and absurd. The whole kitchen sink. They cannot be bothered with specifics, that is not the game being played. Signing on to every broad recommendation would be a direct insult to our own NRC, which does not dabble in such diplomatic newspeak, preferring to assess actual risk, look at each site, mandate practical and specific engineering guidelines, evaluate what has been done.
See INFCIRC/449 and Add.2 and Add.3 and Add.4 and Swiss Amendment.
This stuff was written by people from another planet. It was probably leaked from Planet X which is orbiting with the Earth directly behind the Sun. Planet X is just like ours only its United Nations truly runs everything. That is why they send UFOs to abduct an engineer every now and then, to keep their shit from falling apart. Then we send one of our own (out of Hangar 19) to bring 'em back. Maybe we got the wrong one back, one of their 'senior diplomats' instead.
In it you will find some vague things that sound like good ideas. You're supposed to imagine that this is a world where people do not apply common sense unless they are acting directly on the recommendations of a multi-national NGO.
The compromise statement now says basically, "New nuclear power plants should be designed and constructed with the objective of preventing accidents, and minimizing off-site contamination in case of accidents. Reasonably achievable safety improvements identified at existing plants during... safety assessments should be oriented to these objectives and be implemented in a timely manner."
Engineers should not be afraid to stand up and express their anger when they are insulted. This is an insult. We lose an essential part of our human self-respect and tenacity when insults like this go unanswered. Governance of the world should not be bestowed upon folks who cannot be bothered to delve into detail. Regardless, some people will be comforted by the mere presence of the CNS, they're the people who distrust corporations and their own government, to find solace in the flowery language of international diplomacy even though there is little substance in it.
Basically, this organization-thing was spawned in 1994 and went to sleep. Fukushima woke it up, and they've been running in little circles ever since to come up with a timely response. The response has finally arrived and is on the table in early 2015. This is the kind of time frame you can expect if you pursue world governance.
Meanwhile, the United States Nuclear Power industry and its associated regulatory body NRC hit the ground running in 2011, assessing the disaster and lessons learned from Fukushima. If you are expecting me to elaborate on them and think there is something to be learned from every earthly experience you wil
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Ironically enough every nuclear reactor under construction in the US is stalled in practical terms due to massive cost overruns from following regulations and etc. Which in turn has frozen out companies trying build new reactors anyway.
So all this really does is lower safety standards for everyone else, as there's a not vanishing chance these lowered standards will never apply to a US reactor, as they'll never even be a new one for them to apply to anyway.
No specifics. mdsolar.
Bullshit detector in high range.
It's been a log time since I worked in the industry (I did programming in Health Physics at San Onofre many years ago) but I know that at the time, France was considered to have the safest reactors, operating rules, and procedures. Their Health Physics rules were particularly admired. Of course, this makes sense, because historically, isn't France the country with the widest deployment of and most reliance on nuclear reactors? But, now France has decided on a long-term goal of phasing-out nuclear power. Perhaps the best way to win this game - is to not play at all.
Exactly. Th problem is generally that the existing laws are ignored in the name of profits, becasue all the *individuals* calling the shots benefit from corporate profits, but suffer no penalties for corporate malfeasance. We could fix that.
To start with, how about we make CEOs personally responsible for any and all negligence that occurs on their watch? Start with liquidating their assets, with no "trust fund" safe harbors permitted, as ill gotten gains. And then proceed to criminal penalties.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Others have already pointed out two reasons. One, making it a billion times safer than carrots also makes it cost a million times as much as it already does, and two, if it's more costly than coal, people will just burn coal instead. I'd like to point out two more reasons.
Suppose you make $60,000. You can only spend that $60,000 once. If you pay $100 more on your electric bill to make your power even more safe, that's $100 you don't have to spend on having your car a bit safer - two more airbags, perhaps. Spending your safety budget on the wrong things gets people killed, because any money from your pay check that ends up paying for safer energy is money that can't be used for traffic safety, food safety, etc. So the way to have the safest LIFE is to spend your safety budget where it does the most good, which probably isn't energy related.
Secondly, have you ever worked at a place that makes you change your password monthly? Pretty much everyone there increments their password, so all passwords end with two digits. Ever seen a highway with a speed limit posted that's clearly much too low? Everyone ends up speeding, but by vastly varying amounts since there's no reasonable guidance on how fast you should be going. Excessive rules are counterproductive because they just get people in the habit of ignoring the rules. If you wnt people to follow the rules, you need a) rules that are reasonable and b) people who understand why the rules they are handed are reasonable.
So the proper set of safety rules, the most effective are:
Carefully selected for maximum effect per cost, keeping the safety budget in mind.
Reasonable to follow.
Well explained, so people understand WHY they are reasonable rules that should be followed.
Not sure what exactly it was that got you riled up like that. Of course it is held in broad strokes, and of course it's the job of the national nuclear safety institutions to come up with, implement and oversee the guidelines and rules. It's the lowest common denominator everyone can (or should be able to) agree upon. That's how these things work.
The amendment states:
"Nuclear power plants shall be designed and constructed with the objectives of preventing accidents and, should an accident occur, mitigating its effects and avoiding radionuclides causing long-term off-site contamination. In order to identify and implement appropriate safety improvements, these objectives shall also be applied at existing plants."
There's also a bit on the goal of the amendment: "Switzerland believes that making the principle of "avoiding off-site contamination" legally binding in the Convention would be a vital step towards improved global nuclear safety. ..."
Sounds pretty reasonable to me. But then some existing plants would have to be reexamined and maybe even receive some upgrades to their safety measures. Which would affect somone's bottom line, and we can't have that, now can we?
Switzerland has put forward a proposal to amend the Convention on Nuclear Safety (CNS), arguing stricter standards could help avoid a repeat of Fukushima, where an earthquake and tsunami sparked triple nuclear meltdowns, forced more than 160,000 people to flee nearby towns and contaminated water, food and air.
How convenient it is to conflate the blame for mass suffering from the tsunami with the nuclear event.
Many people have bought into the myth that the nuclear event at Fukushima was a human disaster of epic proportion, ignoring the real disaster which was the tsunami, and by doing so giving a big middle finder to those victims. Many people along the coast of Japan, well outside the Fukushima zone, are still struggling and displaced. They've lost loved ones and their homes. Many will not be able to rebuild in the same place as their old home, but the anti-nuke agenda driven assholes of the world gladly ignore that suffering because they see an opportunity to spread fear.
Meanwhile, not a single human has suffered any health impact due to radioactive releases from the accident, and the prognostications are that none will ever be detected. (if you feel tempted to post a link to the thyroid hoax study, do us a favor and first learn a little about the methods used before you spread ignorance)
Yes, the nuclear accident has complicated matters significantly, and should get due attention, but ask yourself, what do you care about more, an anti nuke agenda or the real human disaster that took place? Do you trust those that are more driven by their agenda than human compassion? Try to find stories about those forgotten victims. It takes a little sifting and effort. Too much for some folks I guess.
Not sure what exactly it was that got you riled up like that.
Because when the Global Governance folk roll into town you have to lock up your daughters, stop issuing parking tickets (they won't pay 'em anyway) and create an entirely new layer of quasi-government to 'interface' and 'negotiate' with them. Ultimately this leads to some time-wasting end that will benefit them more than it does you, *if* you are convinced what you're doing is sound.
The way we have operated nuclear plants in the US is sound. The safety record shows it, and the gigawatt-years of reliable power underscore that success. I believe that as a layman who has researched the topic I am more objective saying this than even the most experienced plant operator... because I am looking from a grand perspective of history, while their own safety culture imposes a certain vulnerability on them, it discourages them from making self-serving statements, even if true. A humility that keeps them from standing up to say "Enough is enough!"
Nuclear energy, as we have done it, has proven to be the most promising and most sustainable --- to use the proper definition of the word --- way to ensure the continuance of modern life.
But there will always be those who try to convince you that another layer of governance is good for you. So when Switzerland proposes that "making the principle of "avoiding off-site contamination" legally binding in the Convention would be a vital step towards improved global nuclear safety. ..." the rational human response is What the fuck.
As in... what the fuck, do these people believe off-site contamination is like a drunk running a stop sign? That keeping Earth safe from contamination is for lack of some simple rule?
As in... what the fuck does 'legally binding' mean in this context? Again, a governance organization arrogantly asserts that there is some evil malfeasance let loose in a lawless world, for lack of something that would be 'legally binding'. Here they come to save the day. What form would a legally binding punishment be, if a signatory is unfortunate to suffer a disaster that spreads a discernible count of radiation across the border? A preemptive strike? Sanctions? Regime change? I'm sure all of this will be discussed at the next meeting.
Don't get me wrong. The IAEA has done some excellent work. Not all international conventions are trite and insulting. To render assistance in a disaster, responsibly notify one's neighbors, agree on safe handling practices, and even address liability in our litigious world, are worth things to agree on.
They want to give this nebulous diplomatic instrument teeth with the stroke of the pen. It has not earned them. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has teeth. It has earned them. It is also a very specific and useful framework tailored to our task at hand.
Now if the Swiss had said, "Be sure you have some form of containment at all" (Chernobyl) or "don't put all your generators in the basement" (Fukushima), you could sink your teeth into that. Such may be the way "things are done". But I would propose that for the most part in real life, things are done by rules of common sense anyway. Has anyone ever asked a plant operator if safety interferes with their bottom line?
Sorry to vent so, thanks for your comment. Also thanks to mdsolar for bringing to our attention evidence that nuclear energy is in a total shambles and the US is once again disappointing the world by acting in its own self-interest.
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Fewer regulations and the removal of them have never really worked either. See the recent wall street crash for example.
This didn't make national news like it should have. Capitalism and dangerous things don't seem to mix too well.
Signing on to every broad recommendation would be a direct insult to our own NRC, which does not dabble in such diplomatic newspeak, preferring to assess actual risk, look at each site, mandate practical and specific engineering guidelines, evaluate what has been done.
I wonder if you know something I don't.
You should dig up a 2011 Associated Press article about tritium leaks at nuclear plants across the country.
Or maybe read about the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant which was so plagued by problems that it was finally shut down.
Heck, a quick google search for 'NRC regulatory capture' will kick back plenty of examples that you can use to reevaluate your position.
The way we have operated nuclear plants in the US is sound. The safety record shows it,
Well, now I'm pretty sure you don't know what you're talking about.
The safety record is public, go look at it.
The NRC has a shit list of the worst plants that it publishes biannually.
Hell, there have been 2 nuclear plants that SCRAMed recently.
One on Christmas and the other last week, during the big north east blizzard.
I wonder what your criteria is for "unsound"
Do we have to have another 3-Mile Island accident?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Why, yes! And that's a bad thing... because?
You should dig up a 2011 Associated Press article about tritium leaks at nuclear plants across the country.
Since tritium has to be ingested and its half-life is short, I thought this wasn't a risk for humans.
Hell, there have been 2 nuclear plants that SCRAMed recently.
One on Christmas and the other last week, during the big north east blizzard.
Wasn't it shutdown because the powerline were gone and they could not "export" electricity out of the plant? That's how I read it anyway.
ID: the nose did not occur naturally, how would we wear glasses otherwise? (apologies to Voltaire)
This again? The fly ash is the light stuff so not much room for heavy metals there. Nobody has EVER found that radioactive fly ash despite looking since the 1970s.
Don't take my word for it. Use your brain. Think of what coal is made of. Fossil vegetable matter with less than 10% sand mixed in, and what do you personally know about beach sand? Is it mostly iron? Is it mostly lead? Is it mostly gold? Is it mostly silica with the heavy stuff not carrying far? How about the radioactive carbon? Is there anything left after a few million years? It all adds up to fly ash being less radioactive than your lunch. The whole stupid thing is due to manipulative prick of a middle manager at Oak Ridge starting a scare campaign in the 1970s including such gems as terrorists getting material from ash heaps to build nuclear bombs. Are the Iranians stupid to have spent so long on reprocessing Uranium instead of just using ash or is the entire pile of crap utter bullshit? Use your brain and you'll work it out.
That's not to say that coal doesn't kill people in a lot of real ways - just that the "coal is radioactive too so why do we need such tight nuclear waste restrictions" propaganda from the 1970s is utter bullshit that we should not be swallowing. There's plenty of real problems with NOx and SOx emissions causing lung problems without imagining something that isn't there. There are plenty of direct mining deaths without making up bullshit.
Tell me how Donald Trump (for example) behaves when an underling questions him and then get back to me about how "cultural" this is.
I'm sure it's common sense that is watered down. 40-year old power plant, ready to be decommissioned and not designed for the eventuality. Maybe life cycle risk management of the nuclear assets might be a good idea after all. Fortunately not many people have to worry about some crazy country, or a terrorist organization of doing irresponsible air strikes or other bombings on civilian power plants and cause nuclear accidents.
Or perhaps it's just a Swiss/German conspiracy to support their large companies that are selling nuclear reactor parts internationally. Hahaa, my ziggles are vibrating!
There's no way it can be compared to perfect on paper designs because the earlier stuff was also perfect on paper before reality got in the way. A lot of the domain knowledge in fabrication has gone so it's likely that the next generation of reactors is going to have far more problems than the previous, not less. Nuclear needs a continued committed effort to be viable - to use a software analogy the Win2k and XP people had left the building when it was time to do Vista.
The US nuclear lobby gave up on doing anything new years ago (as seen with their brutal opposition to the Clinton era thorium project that drove some to the best out of the nuclear industry), the Germans stopped building long ago which made their plant retirement announcements "cheap" green politics (since the plants were due be retired from age soon anyway), the French were spooked by superpheonix and are not keen to get out of the 1970s. So that leaves Russia, India and maybe China as the only places that are going to build anything modern and keep on building on experience.
Those new plants WILL have problems, but that's what pilot plants are for. You don't get better than that 1% (or far better) without being able to learn from those mistakes and we can't learn from mistakes that nobody can remember.
After reading your references, yes, actually it does look like no one was injured by radiation. There is mention of a 70% higher risk of developing thyroid cancer and a 7% higher risk of leukemia and lower percentages for other cancers. To this level of risk I have to say "so what?". These increases in risk are far far lower than the increased risk of cancer just from being poor, or living down wind of a coal fired power plant, or being an airline pilot. Those are risks we all accept each day. This level of increased risk is laughable. You could probably more than offset this level of risk of death and injury by taking the bus instead of driving in a car for a month. Yes, the article mentions that there might be a lifetime risk of death of 2 to 12 onsite workers, which is immediately followed by a caution that the methodology used in calculating those numbers as a sum of risks for serial low level exposures is unproven and possibly suspect. It's also important to remember that the astronomical radiation levels reported during the event were from short lived isotopes of oxygen (oxygen-15 has a half-life of 122.24 seconds) and nitrogen (nitrogen-13 has a half-life of 9.965 minutes). Tritium with a half-life of 12.32 years was probably the most problematic, but given that it is hydrogen, it would have almost certainly diffused to negligible levels rapidly. Yes there was a release of some cesium-137 with a half-life of 30.17 years and strontium-90 with a half-life of 28.8 years, but we have a lot of experience with mitigating and dealing with the effect of these, to the point where the added risk is practically negligible compared to the other risks we face daily. I would expect the health effects of the panic, relocation, and losing one's home far outweighed any and all radiation risk. Or perhaps that was your point?
I still think you're blowing this out of proportion.
I actually am from Switzerland, and to put this into perspective, I can tell you that this amendment is reflecting the current view of our government on the subject. Namely that not only the new reactors should implement state-of-the-art safety measures, but that older ones should be upgraded where *our national nuclear safety agency, the ENSI deems it necessary* (it's funny, but our existing laws don't give us much leverage against the power plant operators, to force them to improve the safety where needed, and our oldest reactor was built in 1969).
You know who doesn't like that? That's right, only the owners of the power plants.
As you say yourself, the wording is broad and held in "anti-specific foofy diplo-language". It's a shame that no matter how watered down such a treaty/amendment is, we *as a species* can still not even agree on the most basic and straight-forward rules. Oh and it's not even rules we're talking about here. The way it is written, these are merely recommendations. It's *completely toothless*. It basically says this: "We'd be happy if you'd consider having a plan and some measures in place in case of a nuclear meltdown (which shouldn't even be possible to happen with all the measures in place, but still did twice in 30 years), that would prevent spewing tons of nuclear fallout into the atmosphere/sea/ground."
Let's be honest, the global governance folk will certainly not roll into any of our towns over this. They will write some mildly annoying reports on the lack of progress in blah blah blah. They're only used as a watchdog when it comes to policing other countries the US/the West sees as a security risk.
And stupid shit happens all the time, even in these places. Just google for the jokers here who drilled holes into one of the primary reactor containments to install a fire extinguisher.
Having a plan and some measures in place to deal with a worst-case scenario should not be too much to ask. These days, I wonder how ever our predecessors were able to put a thing like the human rights convention into place.
> This stuff was written by people from another planet.
"Yee-Fucking-Haw"
And that's why some people at the other side of the pond oppose so-called free trade agreements with U-S-A.
Get your act together first. Incarcerate less. Stop killing your own people. Stop torturing people. Stop letting big corps dictate the law. Then we talk. OK?
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1997/fs163-97/FS-163-97.html
Background radiation exists, so neither you, your lunch or fly ash is non-radioactive in large enough sample sizes and small enough intensities. However calling this, or a banana grove, or a statue of Lincoln, radioactive waste when it's less so than the contents of a typical childrens sandpit is very misleading.
Nuclear power is the future. There should be no regulations whatsoever if we are to survive as a species
so why aren't you president yet, hombre?
Divide by zero error.
Pick any number up to infinity because a perfectly designed nuclear plant is going to be letting out zero on paper. Real plants are a different story with their contents ending up somewhere eventually, hopefully with the waste well managed. Unless there is an actual plant name on such claims it's best to assume that it's the imaginary perfect one instead of a real one that had spills into the Irish Sea, Pacific or wherever.
The larger problem is regulatory capture by industry. It's a virtual revolving door out there of people moving from paid industry positions tote regulator and back again. The same issue prevented hundreds of breaches at Fukushima being taken seriously. Jail time for CEOs and making the operators responsible for clean up would go a long way however.
The heavy stuff goes in the bottom ash. The very light stuff goes in the fly ash. It doesn't "magically disappear", it just doesn't magically melt below it's melting point and end up with small drops of molten silicate blowing in the hot flue gasses. So the heavy stuff that doesn't melt falls out the bottom and we call it "bottom ash" in a lot of places.
Is that making sense?
For the next step with fly ash consider scrubbers and precipitators.
After thinking along those lines enough to get some understanding then feel free to deliver a lecture about how I am mistaken.
Please deliver it from your own understanding and not Alex Gabbard's deliberately misleading partisan bullshit. You do not have to think about it for very long to gain a better understanding than the article you have quoted.
So far all death and heavy injuries were related to mechanical incidents, not radiations. Even your wiki article shows it to be so. There is a projected increase of cancer, but it is relatively low compared to other environmental effect (like living near a coal plant).
As for the evacuation it was a *precaution*. The fact is, the measured radiation were actually lower than in some part of the world where people live on regular basis, like people living in granitic area (for example france : macif central).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Pressed for time this morning... but may I suggest a commentary and analysis of the failure modes of Fukushima reactors and fuel pool#4?
Fukushima âoeMelt Throughsâ: Fact or Fiction?
Fukushima Unit 4 Spent Fuel Pool
Fukushima Fear Uncertainty and Doubt
The torus is a known weak point in any boiling reactor design. Triple-redundancy is our best approach right now. High pressure operation, what can you do?
Truth is, I never set out to 'defend' light water reactors at all. I got into this to push for a renaissance of molten salt designs. But seeing the level of hysteria and outright disinformation out there, I find myself compelled to speak out on behalf of those who have made this dangerous practice of mixing uranium and water routine and as safe as it can possibly be.
Some inspection at Fukushima has been carried by endoscopy and is still incomplete, but conditions observed do not appear to support full meltdown and especially melt-through. And about pool #4 catching fire... and #3's 'prompt criticality' ... those are straight from the Arne Gundersen playbook, which is a muddle of quotes and speculations, confused tenses and intentional failure to communicate whether he is fronting a speculation or citing observed fact, and a smarmy, deliberate dishonesty with which he holds on to those theories as contrary evidence becomes available. He misleads people. Gundersen's apocalyptic poop may litter the Internet forever, but it is hoped that his meal ticket as a doom-lecturer will be cancelled.
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I read the proposal and it seems sensible. What they are saying is that best practice should be done everywhere, and that all plants should be brought up to a high baseline spec so that in the event of problems people are not looking for schematics and trying to figure out what the best course of action for reactor type A with hack B and upgrade C at location D.
We learned NOTHING from Fukushima.
Because there was nothing to learn.
We learned that hubris is the biggest danger. Same with Chernobyl. People thought they knew what they were doing. They thought that safety rules were unnecessary and a waste of time, like you do. They were proven wrong.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You are forgetting about an important property of uranium.. And that is Uranium Oxide is water soluble.
Some of the original "uranium mines" were actually petrified wood.
Dont beleive my word.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Safety-and-Security/Radiation-and-Health/Naturally-Occurring-Radioactive-Materials-NORM/
"Most coal contains uranium and thorium, as well as their decay products and K-40. "
But sure, coal has no uranium in it...
Wouldn't the continued high radioactivity of water coming out of the basement support there having been a melt-through?
Regarding molten salt, I assume you refer to the liquid fluorine molten salt proposals. I looked into this too but it does create a lot more complexity in separation of neutron poisons from the molten stream. I agree that in an accident the design looks better and the fact that it has self regulating qualities is good. However, the molten salt reactors don't get around the largest issue with fission power, expensive to handle waste products. Reprocessing doesn't reduce the volume of waste much (only helps to reuse the plutonium and also reduces mining to some degree). The story of the nuclear fuel cycle was of clean energy but it has left is with quite a number of very polluted sites and a huge bill in dealing with the waste sitting in casks and pools. Perhaps fast neutron burner reactors could help (molten lead looks particularly interesting) but I think that with increasing political instability and the track record of humans being poor managers of super complex systems, nuclear may just not be out friend for a couple more generations. Solar is quite capable of providing is with the energy we need (yes, base load too if we use another type of molten-salt!) and it's not prone to catastrophic failure.
That has to be one of the best comments I have ever read on Slashdot.
To start with, how about we make CEOs personally responsible for any and all negligence that occurs on their watch? Start with liquidating their assets, with no "trust fund" safe harbors permitted, as ill gotten gains. And then proceed to criminal penalties.
Do that and no competent CEO will ever take the job. You'll end up with CEO's that are either so stupid, so incompetent, or so desperate that nobody else wants them. Is that who you want running things?
This "kill the rich" mentality has consequences, you know. Suppose you were a lead programmer and you were held responsible for any and all errors for anyone on your team, forever. Your wages, your home, your savings...all of it could be forfeit if, say, there was a security breach that resulted from one coder making one mistake in one subroutine one day. Would you want that lead programmer job? Doubtful. If you had any sense you'd avoid any leadership position entirely, as would most other smart people. You'd be left with just the idiots running the show, those too stupid or too desperate to appreciate the risk.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Nuclear is currently the safest energy source (measure in deaths per KWh http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja... ). Even in the worst combination of things going wrong, the harm to people is small, while there are hundreds of fatal accidents in the fossil fuel industry each year (search for something like 'gas explosion' on google news).
Imagine if cars were held to the same standards as nuclear power plants. You'd need to get crash rates below 1 in 100 million user years. Make sure that even in the worst crash imaginable (e.g. car at max speed hitting a crowd of people) nobody (except maybe the driver) was exposed to a harmful level of force. All fuel would need to be transported in something that could survive being hit by a plane. All emissions would have to be captured and stored until they were safe. You could get road deaths down from the 1.2 million per year ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) (not including deaths from pollution) but I think cars would not be cheap.
Sounds pretty reasonable to me. But then some existing plants would have to be reexamined and maybe even receive some upgrades to their safety measures. Which would affect somone's bottom line, and we can't have that, now can we?
Careful. Your class-warfare wealth envy ideology is showing.
If you knew anything at all about how a "bottom line" works, you'd know that any increases in costs to the power industry -- or any industry that isn't completely government regulated -- gets passed on to the consumer. You, my dear bottom-line-hating friend, would pay those higher costs in the form of higher utility bills. Or did you think the power industry is someone blessed with an immunity to profit and loss statements? If their operating costs go up, either profits must come down or prices must go up. Profits can only come down so far before you're unable to re-invest in your business, attract and pay high-value talent, and all manner of things that make a business work. So prices will go up. That means you.
Be careful what you wish for. You may get it.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
You should dig up a 2011 Associated Press article about tritium leaks at nuclear plants across the country.
And how many people died from said tritium leaks? What, exactly, was the body count? Oh, that's right...zero. And how much damage was done? How many baby seals and spotted owls were killed? Oh, that's right...zero. The tritium leaks were so small as to be insignificant on any meaningful scale. They were regulatory violations, yes...but the regulations are such that it takes almost nothing to exceed them. I'm not arguing that we don't need such regulations. I'm saying that you're making it out to be far worse than it actually was just because there was a violation. For example, a plant I worked at last year was nearly shut down by the NRC for a violation of "adverse working conditions." Specifically, the union workers felt unappreciated. That was it. Was it a violation that got the NRC's attention? Sure. Did it have any measurable impact on safety? Nope.
Hell, there have been 2 nuclear plants that SCRAMed recently.
One on Christmas and the other last week, during the big north east blizzard.
This statement alone shows how little you understand what you're talking about. Just because a plant SCRAM'd doesn't mean there was a safety issue. For example, one of the plants I worked at a few years ago had to SCRAM. Why? Maintenance was being done on a backup generator, one of several in a triple set of backup generators. Regulations, however, say that a certain number of generators must be available if utility power failed. And guess what? Utility power from the grid did decide to fail during that generator maintenance period. Just bad luck, really, but it happens. So what did the plant operators do? They shut down the plant, in accordance with regulations. Could they have kept operating safely? Almost certainly. There were still two more generators available, a double redundancy that went unused, but regs say triple redundancy or nothing. A plant I worked at this year SCRAM'd when a tornado hit the switchyard and damaged it. The reactor itself was never in any danger, but regs said it had to be shut down because of the switchyard issue. Again, you make mountains of out molehills to prove a point.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Yes the chemistry is hard, otherwise all reprocessing facilities would dissolve their stuff in molten salt at the entrance. But you don't need to reprocess just to get rid of neutron poisons. Just let it sit and wait for about a month and the poisons will have decayed into non poisonous products.
And solar can not provide all the energy we need, unless you redefine 'need' and 'we' and leave the rest of humanity to die of starvation. Add to that some nasty phenomenons called weather and seasons.
The reason we need nuclear now is because fossil fuels are even more polluting wrt CO2, not because some marketing speak did not turn out to be true in absolute sense. I think it is a safe bet to say that you have never felt any impact (apart from hype/worry) from nuclear accidents, but have felt the impact of our continued use of fossil fuels (global warming).
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
There is a difference between normal imperfections, and gross willful negligence such as caused the Fukushima disaster, the BP gulf oil spill, etc, etc, etc.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
At least around here, individual executives can be sued or prosecuted for willful negligence. However, it's difficult to prove and it rarely happens. The lines of responsibility in a corporation are usually too confused and subject to misunderstanding to pin criminal responsibility on one individual, and there's rarely reason for a private party to sue an executive rather than the corporation.
It's also possible for something horrible to happen by accident, despite all due precautions. A good driver in good condition in a maintained car can still get into an accident. Figuring out the difference between accident and gross negligence can be tricky.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Indeed, which is why we should change the law so that the CEO is presumed responsible for all activities of the corporation. They are after all the only person with the authority shine a light into all the darkest places within it, so lets give them the incentive to do so, rather than letting them shield themselves with plausible deniability.
As for accidents, I quite agree. That's the reason juries will sometimes find killers innocent, or guilty of manslaughter, instead of premeditated murder. They can do the same for the CEO. But there's also the fact that accidents are inevitable, and it should be the CEO's responsibility to ensure that the company is taking reasonable precautions. To return to our killer - she may not have intended to kill anyone, but when she parked her unlatched trailer full hungry lions next to the day care center, you'd best believe she made herself legally liable for the consequences.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.