Good points, and I certainly would not pretend to understand all the factors. My point was more along the lines of this being on of many things we see that seems to skip over the fundamental basic of evolution to make some other correlation. The one I proposed was certainly not enlightened, but more an example, albeit a poor one based on your response. I just get a little tired of these article suggesting certain relationships when they are merely studying them and have only circumstantial evidence. Evolutionary theory would suggest that reproductive success was greater for those with lower testosterone, so there would seem to be some benefit. That would seem to be the place to start, or at least acknowledge. Make all theories you want, and test them, but don't go announcing the to the world the minute you get one correlation.
Could it be instead that civilization caused a general lowering of testosterone, because high testosterone levels were no longer vital to survival?
If you follow evolutionary theory, that's the first conclusion one should reach. To assume otherwise is quite scientifically naive. As humans became more proficient at survival and had more time on their hands, being able to sit still and think for a little while was likely a good thing.
Thanks for showing the numbers. It would have worked out better, of course, had San O units operated for their 40 year life or longer. Many US nuclear plants are already licensed to operate for 60 years, so the relative cost might even be significantly lower in those cases, as well as a longer period of fund development.
"too cheap to meter" certainly was an over enthusiastic optimism with nuclear as it was first being deployed. We all know that, but it doesn't make it a bad deal. I never understood the simpleton argument that this was somehow a failure. I guess its just easy to repeat without making an actual point.
There are no defective pipes as such. The defective components are the thousands of small diameter tubes inside the steam generators, which actually had already been replaced, a project many (actually most) of the older plants have done. Due to a design flaw in the components built for this plant, they were wearing out at an accelerated rate.
The first question that comes to my mind is how much would it cost to just fix the damn pipes?
They would have to replace the entire steam generator. That's been done at a lot of plants, in fact the ones at San O were replaced but defective. A few hundred million. But San O is nearing end of life, shale gas is depressing market prices, and politically California is a hostile environment which has its own costs.
Some of the lost opportunity cost will be borne by the manufacturer of the flawed Steam Generators. But that plant has served well for decades even with an early shutdown.
For 2 units, plus a third already shut down one on the site, this is not too bad a cost. Considering the overall lifetime cost of the plant, including D&D, and even though it shut down early, on a cost per kwh basis, it is a good deal for emission free generation.
Unfortunately, many will look at the cost and not have a good perspective / basis for comparison.
You can use Teamviewer or similar for maintenance. I've found that Oovoo is one of the easier video calling platforms available, install and turn off any automatic updates on the computer.
The problem is not just at the care facility end, but with all of the families and friends who may call. You could set up one account for the whole home, and anyone who wanted to video call would have to arrange a time in advance.
Kudo's for ruling out a service that doesn't exist yet. Thats getting ahead of the game. Think of all the things that one day might exist that we could go ahead and regulate right now! Here's one that should be banned:
Another key issue is not grouping all of the backup generators on the sea facing side of the reactor with an inadequate sea wall was a disaster waiting to happen.
Exactly my point, the plant should never have been placed where it could get hit by a tsunami, because it was not designed to withstand one. Had it been designed to withstand one, you would see a lot of differences, including layout of DGs and alternate sources above tsunami level. Improperly assessing the potential event was a failure of the regulator, and the constructor/owner as well.
On that last DG failure item, the point was that with multiple units right next to each other, each with multiple DGs, if the DGs for a unit failed, they could, in a reasonably short time, use supply from another unit's DG (that assumes the site was not destroyed by a tsunami, of course). You are correct, a source of power beyond the batteries is required to be available within a certain period of time. That period of time ranges from several hours to a few days, depending on the specific plant design.
Thanks for the correction. I mis-read the statements and I was wrong on that one. I got thrown off by the sudden switch from a discussion of external events to this topic which really isn't external events. I admit when I am incorrect and appreciate your clarification.
Still, be careful with the terminology of 'accident' and 'near miss' and the statistics behind them, as they get applied and represented in a very inconsistent manner by the anti-nuke lobby.
Agreed. Japan is a high seismic activity area and should have set higher requirements to start with, just as they should have never assumed a massive tsunami would not happen when its clear that it could based on the geology of the area and the type of coastline. Raising the minimum requires going back and re-analyzing to see if the design is still adequate and making modifications where it isn't, costly to do after the fact.
I think you did not read it, because it does not say "the plant survived an earthquake undamaged". So, you are resorting to changing my words so you can play a game of "gotcha", and you have gone down that path because your arguments were failing.
The plant was not designed to operate when inundated by water, it was not designed to withstand a tsunami of this magnitude, it was assumed a tsunami would never breach the protective wall and reach the plant, therefore, simple things like protecting the structures from the forces of the tsunami, and waterproofing all of the ducts, vents, doors, etc with controls over when and how long they can be open, were never in place.
Even with diesel failures at a unit, it could still have been safely shut down had the tsunami not hit. One option could have been borrowing power from another unit, but that would not necessarily be required. Diesels are very reliable machines that are tested on a regular basis. Adding a third does not improve the situation as much as you may think, because if two fail at the same time, its more likely a common cause than a different one, and the third diesel would stand a good chance of suffering that common cause as well. That is where testing, maintenance and reliability programs become very important. Also, having diverse means to achieve a safe state is also key.
The key is not placing a plant that cannot withstand a tsunami where it can be hit by one, because designing to withstand a tsunami suddenly inundating the site it really not practical.
First, there were more than one unit that all met essentially the same fate from the tsunami, it was not just one unit, and each unit has multiple safety systems that are designed to complete their mission even if one fails, as the assumption is always that something will go wrong. There were plenty of operable cooling components in place to shut down the plant after the earthquake. Not so after the tsunami.
You claimed the plant was not at all affected by the earthquake, which is wrong.
I never said the plant was not at all affected, that is another fabrication by you. The safety systems, those designed to operate after such an event, were quite capable of safety shutting down the plant after the quake. They were not capable after the tsunami hit.
Outside power is not required to shut the plant down. There nearby plants, the ones right next door, the ones not hit by the tsunami, also lost power but shut down just fine. The Fukushima Daiichi plants were in the process of shutting down after the quake and before the tsunami, even though offsite power was lost. The emergency diesel generators had started and the units were just fine to shut down. Had the tsunami not hit, regardless of the quake, you would never have heard of Fukushima Daiichi, just like you probably can't name any of the units that survived the severe earthquake without googling.
Slashdot Mirror
Or maybe a real life game could be held in the decommissioned plant. Lots of rooms, hatches, and doors.
Good points, and I certainly would not pretend to understand all the factors. My point was more along the lines of this being on of many things we see that seems to skip over the fundamental basic of evolution to make some other correlation. The one I proposed was certainly not enlightened, but more an example, albeit a poor one based on your response. I just get a little tired of these article suggesting certain relationships when they are merely studying them and have only circumstantial evidence. Evolutionary theory would suggest that reproductive success was greater for those with lower testosterone, so there would seem to be some benefit. That would seem to be the place to start, or at least acknowledge. Make all theories you want, and test them, but don't go announcing the to the world the minute you get one correlation.
Maybe it was the reduction of female testosterone that made men want to breed more?
Could it be instead that civilization caused a general lowering of testosterone, because high testosterone levels were no longer vital to survival?
If you follow evolutionary theory, that's the first conclusion one should reach. To assume otherwise is quite scientifically naive. As humans became more proficient at survival and had more time on their hands, being able to sit still and think for a little while was likely a good thing.
Thanks for showing the numbers. It would have worked out better, of course, had San O units operated for their 40 year life or longer. Many US nuclear plants are already licensed to operate for 60 years, so the relative cost might even be significantly lower in those cases, as well as a longer period of fund development.
"too cheap to meter" certainly was an over enthusiastic optimism with nuclear as it was first being deployed. We all know that, but it doesn't make it a bad deal. I never understood the simpleton argument that this was somehow a failure. I guess its just easy to repeat without making an actual point.
There are no defective pipes as such. The defective components are the thousands of small diameter tubes inside the steam generators, which actually had already been replaced, a project many (actually most) of the older plants have done. Due to a design flaw in the components built for this plant, they were wearing out at an accelerated rate.
The first question that comes to my mind is how much would it cost to just fix the damn pipes?
They would have to replace the entire steam generator. That's been done at a lot of plants, in fact the ones at San O were replaced but defective. A few hundred million. But San O is nearing end of life, shale gas is depressing market prices, and politically California is a hostile environment which has its own costs.
Some of the lost opportunity cost will be borne by the manufacturer of the flawed Steam Generators. But that plant has served well for decades even with an early shutdown.
For 2 units, plus a third already shut down one on the site, this is not too bad a cost. Considering the overall lifetime cost of the plant, including D&D, and even though it shut down early, on a cost per kwh basis, it is a good deal for emission free generation.
Unfortunately, many will look at the cost and not have a good perspective / basis for comparison.
You can use Teamviewer or similar for maintenance. I've found that Oovoo is one of the easier video calling platforms available, install and turn off any automatic updates on the computer.
The problem is not just at the care facility end, but with all of the families and friends who may call. You could set up one account for the whole home, and anyone who wanted to video call would have to arrange a time in advance.
Kudo's for ruling out a service that doesn't exist yet. Thats getting ahead of the game. Think of all the things that one day might exist that we could go ahead and regulate right now! Here's one that should be banned:
touchscreen underwear.
Any other recommendations?
Sue the bastards... but they might need to hire a lawyer to do it.
Its much bigger than a megafactory, that's all I can tell you.
Another key issue is not grouping all of the backup generators on the sea facing side of the reactor with an inadequate sea wall was a disaster waiting to happen.
Exactly my point, the plant should never have been placed where it could get hit by a tsunami, because it was not designed to withstand one. Had it been designed to withstand one, you would see a lot of differences, including layout of DGs and alternate sources above tsunami level. Improperly assessing the potential event was a failure of the regulator, and the constructor/owner as well.
On that last DG failure item, the point was that with multiple units right next to each other, each with multiple DGs, if the DGs for a unit failed, they could, in a reasonably short time, use supply from another unit's DG (that assumes the site was not destroyed by a tsunami, of course). You are correct, a source of power beyond the batteries is required to be available within a certain period of time. That period of time ranges from several hours to a few days, depending on the specific plant design.
If those are your final words of wisdom for this particular exchange... well, I'll just let you rest with them. I did chuckle a bit.
Thanks for the correction. I mis-read the statements and I was wrong on that one. I got thrown off by the sudden switch from a discussion of external events to this topic which really isn't external events. I admit when I am incorrect and appreciate your clarification.
Still, be careful with the terminology of 'accident' and 'near miss' and the statistics behind them, as they get applied and represented in a very inconsistent manner by the anti-nuke lobby.
typical response for those that can't make a valid point.
Agreed. Japan is a high seismic activity area and should have set higher requirements to start with, just as they should have never assumed a massive tsunami would not happen when its clear that it could based on the geology of the area and the type of coastline. Raising the minimum requires going back and re-analyzing to see if the design is still adequate and making modifications where it isn't, costly to do after the fact.
I think you did not read it, because it does not say "the plant survived an earthquake undamaged". So, you are resorting to changing my words so you can play a game of "gotcha", and you have gone down that path because your arguments were failing.
Please just stop now while you are behind.
yes, please find that quote.
The plant was not designed to operate when inundated by water, it was not designed to withstand a tsunami of this magnitude, it was assumed a tsunami would never breach the protective wall and reach the plant, therefore, simple things like protecting the structures from the forces of the tsunami, and waterproofing all of the ducts, vents, doors, etc with controls over when and how long they can be open, were never in place.
Even with diesel failures at a unit, it could still have been safely shut down had the tsunami not hit. One option could have been borrowing power from another unit, but that would not necessarily be required. Diesels are very reliable machines that are tested on a regular basis. Adding a third does not improve the situation as much as you may think, because if two fail at the same time, its more likely a common cause than a different one, and the third diesel would stand a good chance of suffering that common cause as well. That is where testing, maintenance and reliability programs become very important. Also, having diverse means to achieve a safe state is also key.
The key is not placing a plant that cannot withstand a tsunami where it can be hit by one, because designing to withstand a tsunami suddenly inundating the site it really not practical.
First, there were more than one unit that all met essentially the same fate from the tsunami, it was not just one unit, and each unit has multiple safety systems that are designed to complete their mission even if one fails, as the assumption is always that something will go wrong. There were plenty of operable cooling components in place to shut down the plant after the earthquake. Not so after the tsunami.
You claimed the plant was not at all affected by the earthquake, which is wrong.
I never said the plant was not at all affected, that is another fabrication by you. The safety systems, those designed to operate after such an event, were quite capable of safety shutting down the plant after the quake. They were not capable after the tsunami hit.
Outside power is not required to shut the plant down. There nearby plants, the ones right next door, the ones not hit by the tsunami, also lost power but shut down just fine. The Fukushima Daiichi plants were in the process of shutting down after the quake and before the tsunami, even though offsite power was lost. The emergency diesel generators had started and the units were just fine to shut down. Had the tsunami not hit, regardless of the quake, you would never have heard of Fukushima Daiichi, just like you probably can't name any of the units that survived the severe earthquake without googling.