You're speaking as though red tape is some sort of cure for bad management. But red tape is, by definition, bad management in and of itself. Relevant safety standards and enforcement are a good idea; red tape doesn't provide any such thing, except maybe by accident.
Your comment demonstrates a clear mis-understanding of why the NRC exists. As reactors age they get more dangerous and harder to operate. Only a system observation of the nuclear process can reveal what is referred to as 'Accident Sequence Precursors' which is why a reactor is 'licensed' by the NRC.
The Plant's "red tape" management is geared to keeping the reactor operating, the NRC's "red tape" is gear to preventing an accident. If a reactor just stopped when something went wrong then it might be ok but Nuclear power is like using a hand grenade as a hammer and saying to yourself 'well, it's never gone off before', every time you use it.
These have been working of submarines and aircraft carriers for decades.
Military applications have larger budgets, aren't expected to produce a profit, have different design criteria and safety rating systems to determine them fit for operation. If they do not meet those criteria, they are not operated (i.e Nuclear Subs). If you want to understand why read The Columbia Accident Investigation Board's final report of how Military vehicles are kept safe.
It is high time some of that military tech comes to civilian use.
By all means, can we have the engineering and safety culture that comes with it?
If you are afraid of nuclear power, you are on the wrong website.
I'm afraid of ignorance. Especially ignorance of the science and facts associated with the nuclear power process, especially here where people are usually more skeptical. I haven't met anyone capable of sustaining an advocacy of the Nuclear process when confronted with the facts. Nuclear advocacy here generally means resorting to ad-hominem attack, as these two thinly veiled comments demonstrate.
This is supposed to be for technologically informed people.
I'd be happy with just 'informed'. There are so many problems with nuclear power process that you could be 'informed' about, yet "pithy" comments such as yours get modded 'insightful'; perhaps because you say what the group think wants to believe. If you want to use a military methodology why don't you listen to the dissenting voices that have something to say about the nuclear industry and evaluate those comments with some pragmatism slashdot, instead of just accepting the 'marketingspeak' all techies hate to hear - except if it's to do with nuclear. It's all to common for these sorts of comments to be modded up, it's like there is a 'twitter' for nuclear power.
Credible Nuclear advocacy cannot exist while the nuclear process is layered with failures, obscuration of facts and blame shifting.
Nuclear power provides no opportunity for technologists. Solar and wind power provide opportunities for extending the technology industry by creating a framework for driving efficiency into the entire energy industry. Instead of 'just throwing more watts at it', if we were smart technologists, we would would be identifying the areas in the energy industry where adding intelligence to power management saves power, creates more technology jobs and investment into sustainable medium to long term energy solutions and infrastructure.
Mr AC, you sound like you work for the company's marketing department.
Safety systems will be similar but the reactor cores are different between the Triga (fuel rods in a pool type reactor) and the Hyperion Power Generation Uranium Hydride (liquid metal) reactor.
So in other words, it's not really a TRIGA reactor, it's something else with new types of failure modes - accounting for the fact that it's actually a new design kinda sorta like triga. TRIGA's have a lot more containment than, than, well there is no documentation for this type of reactors containment is there, packed soil perhaps?
If you were going to blow it up...
...it wouldn't be too hard for anyone determined enough to do it. Beside you don't need to *actually* blow it up - just damage it so that it leaks a bit or goes critical. With suitable determination anything can be achieved, there would certainly be enough time.
It would not add much to the cost to have sensors and digital video camera security to these things. So extreme tunneling, attempts to move it or blow it up should be easily detectable and action taken.
by all means, buy those cameras, employ those bored guards, no need to concern yourselves,,, move along.
For the amount of effort Thus there is no incremental risk. The nuclear material is tougher to turn into nuclear bombs than using raw uranium,
But the spent fuel would be a nice dirty bomb wouldn't it.
A lot of the initial one hundred orders are from oil and gas companies.
Figure's, Nuclear power provides the solution for us to burn more oil, to make more greenhouse gasses, so we have to have these reactors. The solution all makes sense now.
the units will be sited several hundred meters from where people are living.
*gulp* - not from where I'm living please. I'd rather use solar and wind and change my energy consumption habit's so I use less energy. And the problem of leaks into the local water table - any solution for that besides? 'places hand on heart' - "these reactors will not leak".
Three factories from a small company are scheduled to produce 4000 of these 15 ton reactors with each using 100-200 kg or so of uranium every 5-10 years. Make three hundred factories and produce 400,000 of these 15 ton reactors every five years. 16,000 tons of uranium per year (a fraction of what we now use for light water reactors). Produce 10 TWe of power. Currently the world uses about 15 TWe of electricity. This system could provide virtually carbon and pollution free energy.
I call bullshit
160 ton core * 104 reactors * 1 year = So what you are saying is the entire core of every reactor in the U.S is replaced once every year. Even if you were talking about all 450 odd reactors around the world your talking about a full core replacement once every four year which is not consistent with the common refuelling cycle of 1/3 of a core every approximately 2 years. What fraction are you talking about? 2/3's of existing consumption! This is not a significant advantage.
Even so lets examine this claim.., 16,000 tons. Let's see, to get a kilogram of uranium you have to process 500 tons of hard ore (almost no soft ore left) - and even that is assuming an extremely optimistic extraction efficiency approaching %50 AND assumes you have a high grade ore. Where do you intend to get this uranium from with supplies already dwindling and competing with existing users for supply?.
Yes, I can see it now, electricity too cheap to meter...
After 50-100 years each of the units themselves would need to be decommissioned.
I call Bullshit. Again
Magically these reactors have solved the materials problems t
Proposed Pebble Bed Modular Reactors (PBMR) are designed with exactly the reduced containment that Chernobyl was built with, produce deadlier waste and have deadlier failure modes. They have been designed this way to reduce the expense of building them, as the sheer volume of concrete required to build a reactor containment is one of the highest input costs as well as the third greatest contributor of greenhouse gasses.
If you reprocessed the fuel to make new fuel, and were left with only the low level waste then the radiation hazard would be fairly comparable with coal ash.
That's incorrect. Fissile ash is *very* radioactive, that's why it has a relatively short half life of 600 years, before you calculate the daughter products.
Conventional PWR containment vessel should sustain a direct airplane hit.
To quote the Union of Concerned Scientists assessment of the security of Nuclear Instalations.
Nearly 25 years ago, the NRC chartered an industry panel to examine design changes that would make nuclear power reactors less vulnerable to sabotage.
The panel identified many feasible design changes - none of which have been incorporated into "advanced" reactor designs like the AP-600, AP-1000, ABWR, etc.
To the extent practical and feasible, nuclear power reactors built in the 21st century must be designed against 21st century, not 18th century, threats.
So why would you expect them to be incorporated into this design. I can tell you from looking at the design specs they have dramatically less containment. Why is there no time for boring? 25 meters into compacted soil is nothing and would just look like a team inspecting the reactor.
You have no idea what sort of failure modes can be bought about by sabotaging the reactor. A basic attack would involve boring a small hole to the top of the reactor, depositing the charge, filling the hole and leaving. I would anticipate the damage done to the reactor casing sufficient to allow it to lose containment or worse.
I think the whole terrorist threat is very exaggerated.
Yes, yes, that's probably how various intelligence services reports were treated just before 9/11. In reality terrorists would be thinking "so many targets, so little time"
The main point is that nuclear power has been safe for decades and its only because of FUD that it hasn't been in use.
Back in 1997 the trend for Licencee Event Reports and Accident Sequence Precursors was going up. Of the 563 design basis issues for 1997 only 238 were found due to a deliberate effort, the remainder were 'self revealing' and the bulk identified by 'luck'.
Of the 104 reactors operating in the U.S 41 experienced year plus outages to restore their safety levels and 10 reactors did it twice.
This is consistent with today's reactor design, which has a 40 year life span. During the early phase of the plants life span most of the operational issues are resolved so that in the reactors middle age it has a relatively trouble free operation. Now that the reactors are approaching the end of thier life span the materials that the reactor were built with are becoming embrittled, corroded, seals begin to fail. Rather than efficiency of operation, they are forced to squeeze everything they can get from it because once that reactor is shut down it's a tomb that cannot be disassembled for ten to a hundred years. It then incurs ongoing operational energetic expenditure to maintain the cooling systems and contains elements such as cobalt 60, iron 55, tritium, carbon 14 and calcium 41 amongst others. Finally a reactor incurs ten to fifteen times the energy cost of a coal or gas power plant to dismantle.
Nuclears biggest problem is red tape.
Which is necessary because of the same management failures ("it's never been a problem before" - mindset) that crashed the space shuttle on both occasions. The
Davis-Besse plant is a good example. The operational characteristics of the plant itself warned the management team there was a problem. Water filters were being replaced once every few days where are it used to be once every few months, instead of investigate the problem management ordered the filters to continually be replaced. The cause was a leak of borated water that was corroding the reactor head. As these reactors age more oversight will be necessary to overcome the lack of knowledge of accident sequence precursors at the management level.
3 mile island? Literally not an issue... the safety measures contained the problem.
To quote the NRC documentation of the incident A significant release of radiation from the plant's auxiliary building, performed to relieve pressure on the primary system and avoid curtailing the flow of coolant to the core.
In reality large amounts of contamination were released beyond Nuclear Industry assurances. The gamma radiation monitors on the top of the auxiliary building were not designed to measure such high concentrations and they went off the scale when the accident *began*, the release of contamination went on for several *days*. Estimates were based on thermoluscent dosimeters on the fence and Alpha and Beta emissions weren't even measured.
Because of the weather conditions it was known that emissions from TMI travelled a long way and were measured in Albany, NY. Joeseph Hendrie (former chairman of the NRC) was quoted (at the time) "We are operating almost totally in the in the blind, [Governor Thornburgh's] information is ambiguous, mine is non-existent and - I don't know - it's like a couple of blind me staggering around making decisions."
Expert measurements of radioactive iodine in farm animals nearby revealed Nuclear Industry estimates of contamination released to be 'grossly underestimated'. Radioactive iodine, plutonium, strontium, americium, 172,000 cubic feet of high level radioactive water, large quantities of krypton 85 and later that year 8 million litres of radioactive water containing tritium, that was evaporated deliberately, were all part of the toxicity that was released.
Study after study has not shown any increase in cancer or teratogenic effects.
Dr Carl Johnson, an expert in radiation related diseases asked the NRC and DOE to do a survey to look for some of these elements in the respirable dust around TMI after the accident and they refused.
Hundreds of local people reported a variety of symptoms and signs consistent with acute radiation sickness, which manifest when people are exposed to whole-body doses of radiation around 100 rads - a high level of exposure.
Dr Gordon McLeod, Pennsylvania health commissioner at the time of the accident, noted that the number of babies born with hypothyroidism doubled in the nine months following the accident. He postulated that this was because the thyroid gland is was affected by the large quantities of iodine 131 that escaped during the accident. Dr McLeod's findings indicate that if babies and children exposed are not investigated epidemiologically TMI will not be identified as the cause. Dr McLeod was fired by Governor Thornburgh just six months after he took office.
A study performed by Pennsylvania State University, College of Engineereing, on milk in March 1979 found readings as high as 21,300 picocuries per litre, but despite a quote from Thomas Gerusky, then director of Radiological Health from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources "If we ever found a thousand picocuries we would take action", no investigation was conducted.
Cancer incidence in the exposed population was studied only through the years 1981-1985, a few years after TMI, despite the fact that the latent period of carcinogenisis is 2 to 60 years. There have been virtually no further epidemiological studies of the exposed population performed since that time, although a 2002 report issued by the National cancer Institute and Centers for Disease Control found that Pennslyvania had the seventh-highest cancer incidence in the nation. If you have a link to further studies I would like to see them.
Basically you'd get a lower dose of radiation living near 3 mile island than you would living near a coal fired power plant.
You're probably not aware that radioactive elements accumulate in the food chain. Radioactive isotopes analogue elements that living creatures need to survive, and we ea
After 25 years of IT, I still feel like I know nothing, I try to read and learn everything, one day I might know something. I find this helps.
Desiderata
Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others,even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit.If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter,for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery.But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love,for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars;you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you,no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be.And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life,keep peace in your soul.With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.
badkarmadayaccount you exhibit such typical fanboi behaviour that's it's amusing. You need some help with your perception of reality and some of these comments may help you adjust.
What about it? Consider how much uranium has to be[sic] mined to produce a given amount of energy, and the amount of coal it takes for the equivalent? Not to mention that uranium ore is usually obtained by strip mining, which is much safer than tunnelling[sic] to the center of the Earth (figuratively speaking, of course).
I have considered it, and read the science concerning the entire process. I recommend that you educate yourself with matters of importance rather than correcting my spelling.
Now go off and learn about the Net Energy Return of the entire nuclear process.
[snip].. what about Three Mile Island? Was there any contamination, at any point, anywhere? No..... IOW, nice straw man.
Frankly your statement is idiotic, to quote the NRC documentation of the incident A significant release of radiation from the plant's auxiliary building, performed to relieve pressure on the primary system and avoid curtailing the flow of coolant to the core. That's coolant is officially recognised contamination. You show a strong desire to be deceived by the man, despite the available evidence.
So where did the steam from the primary cooling system water go when the valve, that caused the accident, was stuck open. Did it dissipate into another dimension. Did the water say to itself 'gee I should be inside the reactor - boi am I gonna be in trouble' or was it evaporated into the atmosphere. I bet that since it was in contact with the fuel rods the "contamination" said to itself, 'boi I should really stay inside today'.
In reality large amounts of contamination were released beyond Nuclear Industry assurances. The gamma radiation monitors on the top of the auxiliary building were not designed to measure such high concentrations and they went off the scale when the accident *began*, the release of contamination went on for several *days*. Estimates were based on thermoluscent dosimeters on the fence and Alpha and Beta emissions weren't even measured.
Because of the weather conditions it was known that emissions from TMI travelled a long way and were measured in Albany, NY. Joeseph Hendrie (former chairman of the NRC) was quoted (at the time) "We are operating almost totally in the in the blind, [Governor Thornburgh's] information is ambiguous, mine is non-existent and - I don't know - it's like a couple of blind me staggering around making decisions." - So if they didn't know, how is it you do?
Expert measurements of radioactive iodine in farm animals nearby revealed Nuclear Industry estimates of contamination released to be 'grossly underestimated'. Radioactive iodine, plutonium, strontium, americurium, 172,000 cubic feet of high level radioactive water, large quantities of krypton 85 and later that year 8 million litres of radioactive water containing tritium that were evaporated deliberately were all part of the toxic cocktail that was released.
IOW, that straw man glows in the dark.
Accidental venting? What do you think this is, the Manhattan project? Every single coal plant in the country is gonna have it's boiler split before anything is released accidentally from a nuclear plant, and are going to be followed by the coal plants in the whole world, if what is released is actually remotely dangerous.
Radioactive gases are vented fortnightly from *every* nuclear reactor as NRC standard policy. Why should these elements be released into the environment under any circumstances let alone as a standard operating procedure? All reactors leak, that's a factor of their operation, the question is "How dangerous?".
And that's before we consider accidental or unauthorised venting.
What in the world do you mean by "no real net-energy gain"? Do you realize that by making such a claim you're sinking your own argument? No, it's not perfectly reasonable. Nuclear power is extremely safe, better for the environment than coal and, IMO, hydroelectric dams. It's proven practical in plenty of countries and is obviously profitable to them.
I mean when you examine the end to end energy expenditure of commercial nuclear power generation the energy put in is less than the energy extracted. Since energy is the only real currency in the world, not dollars, you want to make sure that over the entire industrial process the amount of joules you extract is more than the amount of joules you put in. A characteristic of Nuclear energy is that it continues to consume energy *after* it has produced energy.
To begin it takes so much energy to get the ore in the first place. 2.4 gigajoules per ton for soft ores and 5.5 gigajoules per ton for hard hard ores. To get a kilogram of uranium you have to process 500 tons of hard ore (as there is almost no soft ore left) - and even that is assuming an extremely optimistic extraction efficiency approaching %50 and that assumes you have a high grade ore. Yet you still have to factor in the energetic remediation of the mine tailing. Like Oil, all the cheap uranium is gone.
Today's reactor design have a roughly 40 year life span. During the early phase of the plants life span most of the operational issues were resolved so that in the reactors middle age it has a relativley trouble free operation. Now that the reactors are approaching the end of thier life span the materials that the reactor were built with are becoming embrittled, corroded, seals begin to fail. It's not efficiency of operation, it's squezing everything you can get because once that reactor is shut down - it's a tomb that cannot be disassembled for ten to a hundred years, good bye profit hello ongoing operational costs, hello cobalt 60, iron 55, tritium, carbon 14 and calcium 41 amongst others, hello ten to fifteen times the energy cost of a coal or gas power plant to dismantle. Who do you think will wear those costs?
Then there is the CRUD - Chalk River Unidentified Deposits, where a lethal combination of highly radioactive fission and actinide elements from leaking fuel rods in the reactor core itself were discovered. Every reactor has it and *safe* dismantling of the 450 odd reactors worldwide will have to deal with a energy expenditure of almost half of the entire facilities construction on the core alone and we havent even started talking about the cooling water and radioactive hydrogen that is just dumped into the ocean. Demolishing a decommissioned nuclear reactor has not successfully been performed safely on a large scale yet. Nuclear industry proponents tout the amount of energy that can be extracted from a gram of Uranium but rarely factor the *Net Energy Return* of the Nuclear fuel cycle, associated infrastructure and the long term storage of toxic waste. Profit only occurs if the taxpayer bares the expense of yet another externality.
And I haven't even mentioned the energetic costs of remediating byproducts from the enrichment process, the transport and infrastructure costs to move 70,000 tons of plutonium or the energetic costs of constructing a geologically stable containment facility in granite like the Swiss are attempting.
How has the amount of subsidies spent in the US on Nuclear Energy been a reasonable investment that has yeilded returns energetic or otherwise.
The waste issue can be minimalized and solved with breeder reactors and other technologies. Given all of these, it's NOT pointless, but you're crazy to suggest that anyone is arguing that it's a long-term solution.
I'm not suggesting that they are and that's the problem, there is no long term thinking. I am suggesting that developing a long term plan for how to deal with the mess this generation of the N
Bah. The most "dangerous" incidents in the country have hurt how many people? Compare this to ANY other significant form of power.
Not to mention the illnesses and deaths due to pollution, including release of radioactive particles (particularly from coal).
Well Shawn, should I consider the mining, and enrichment process? What about containment (or lack of)? or are you talking about a narrow 'just the day to day running of the plant' type incident? But since nuclear powers externalities and pollutants persist well beyond a run of the mill power plant and accumulate up the food chain how do we know how many people Chernobyl or TMI are *still* killing? It's not as if the isotope has a little flag on it saying "this strontium 90 was brought to you by an accidental venting that occured from a reactor half way across the country"
I'm talking about cancer Shawn. Isotopes analogue elements that our bodies seek from food producing different cancers, radon 220 that causes lung cancer, or radium 226 that causes bone cancers. Care to describe what xenon, argon or krypton decay into and the health side effects of those elements once ingested? What about iodine 131 or ceasium 137?
Over what timescale Shawn? a minute, a day, a week a year. If, of the 7 million deaths from cancer this year, a million of them came from nuclear industry externalities, is it less of a disaster because it took those people 15 years to die? Of course conveniently there is no data available. Radioactive isotopoes escape from *whatever* part of the nuclear industry (could be mining, DU dust) who knows? and it's injested, hey it's an alpha emmiter, bingo, cancer. What percentage of yearly cancer deaths will you attribute to the Nuclear industry, 10%, 5% 1%, pick a number Shawn because we can be certain that it's above 0%. If of the millions of people that die from cancer each year (worldwide 58 Million this year), is it somehow less because they didn't actually have anything to do with the nuclear industry at all?
Bah it's ok, it's a future generations problem isn't it Shawn? NIMG. One hunder years after all these reactors stop functioning how radioactive wil they be? What containment will still function? What about two hundred or three hundred years, four five, six hundred years? Even at 1% of today's numbers for cancer, every year how big are those numbers?
Bah, it's all speculation though isn't it Shawn, it's ok, go back to your affluent lifestyle, it's ok to tax future generations, don't have any concerns for your kids, they will be fine. They will sort the problems out, they won't blame you.
And, of course, there's also the fact that modern reactor designs are as much safer than DB and TMI as those reactors are safer than Chernobyl -- and even the Chernobyl accident required a combination of bad maintenance, improper operation and deliberate disabling of safety devices.
Oh, it's a fact is it? How are they safer Shawn, why don't you enlighten me exactly how they are safer and exactly where the 'modern' reactors you describe are. Tell me why 41 of the nuclear power reactors licensed by the NRC (AEC) experienced year-plus outages to restore safety levels (10 reactors did it twice). Tell me how you know better than the US House Committee on Government Operations who concluded (of nuclear reactors);
Mismanagement was a problem during construction.
Mismanagement was a problem during operation.
Mismanagement will be a challenge during construction and operation of new reactors
Just how are you going to fix that?
Nuclear power is the cleanest, safest power source we have.
No, it's the dirtiest, dumbest most energy inefficient way known to man to boil water.
Safety is a tyrant's tool; no one can oppose safety.
propaganda is a tyrant's tool, used to lead the weak minded so they don't feel the need to ask questions and think for themselves.
I love assholes and qualify them by saying "IIRC".
I was having a perfectly reasonable and civil conversation until you came along and stuck your illiterate thoughtless 2 cents in. Try reading my thread properly before your little, stoned, addled mind hits 'submit', Fucktard.
1. IIRC, the sequence of events that occurred at Chernobyl. i.e If I Recall Correctly the events leading up to the Chernobyl disaster, i.e I don't care why it blew up - it fucking blew up - and there was no containment building.
2. I compared proposed PBMR designs with RBMK. You know, graphite covered fuel kernels, helium gas cooled, no containment building required.
3. I said 'Proposed new generation 'once-through' series' reactors, like the AP-1000, are designed with significantly reduced containment.' - where in that separate paragraph did I compare them with RBMK?. Answer, you were so wasted on whatever you were smoking you saw it that way.
It's the first time I've ever said IIRC and some fuckwit like you decided to use it to attack me because they had no valid contribution to make.
But you get that first post karma.
And you get to show off your true idiotic nature.
the fact that your initial claim, to wit that the AP1000 and AP600 reactors have similar containment structures to the RBMK series,
Where did I make that comparison, lay off the pot multiplexo - you are smoking it too much.
In short you're ignorant and full of shit and you got called on it and rather than stand up and admit that you were full of shit you instead attempt to change the subject.
Ignorant people like you defend nuukler bower and reveal your inability to gather even the most rudimentary facts about the end to end operation if the Nuclear Industry. Fanboy shrill-shills, such as yourself, are always there ready to attack anyone who make the vaguest criticism of the Nuclear Power Industry whilst unable to make any objective defence of the industry without resorting to the ad-hominem attack.
I've never seen nuclear advocacy make an objective arguments that stands up to analysis. When presented with the facts your arguments fold or you become abusive, and now, even properly reading what someone has written is too much to ask. I've endured your type of tiresome ignorance for so many years in an attempt to raise awareness of the need to drive some serious industry wide improvements into the Nuclear Industry. That we need to analyse the last 50 years of operation and confront the serious issues which, if you make a realistic and honest assessment of the Nuclear Industry, are there, so we can move forward.
I have supported research into better reactor technology so we can address plutonium disposal pragmatically, but even the most rudimentary step forward, establishing a geologically stable granite containment facility, is impossible with people like you around. Fuck you, I may as well be 'anti' because even the most pedantically checked critical post is seen as 'anti', and I still get a serve from the 'anti's. Whilst you stick your ignorant dumb ass belligerent head in the sand, pretend everything is a-ok, and get fucked by propaganda. Fucking think for yourself you Pwnd fucking sheep, WAKE UP.
Once upon a time, IIRC, I read someone post
We need something better than 'fanboy' to refer to fanboys'
I wanted to refer to fanboy's as 'shrills' in reference to the loud unpleasant noise they make, but the word 'shill', 'one who participates in a swindle to dupe others' was equally appropriate. But now I have made up a new word that, whilst sounds old, is new and describes your kind precisely multiplexo,
fan; describing an overly enthusiastic supporter of a cause,
All I can say is that you're confused about what happened at Chernobyl.
Well I did say If I Recall Correctly. According to the wikipedia article about the accident there were several contributing factors. I don't study it for a living, so maybe I've missed something. The reaction was inhibited by xenon poisoning because the reactor was unintentionally reduced to less than 10 percent of it's output and the operators almost completely removed the control rods, and then
Slowly, the reactor's power only increased to 200 MW, less than a third of the minimum required for the experiment. Yet the experiment was continued.
The design flaw with the scram rods was (ahem) critical to the accident - had the scram rods not had the initial boost to the reactivity, the accident would likely have never happened.
I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm simply pointing out that there are several seemingly insignificant contributing factors here, the most significant being the human factor overriding the safety systems.
The point is the reactor blew up because the operators were digging an incident pit, to which no industrial system is immune.
As for containment, I have heard no plans to reduce containment to the levels of the RBMK-1000's
I didn't say it was.
Containment design prior to TMI was predicated on an radio-iodine release several orders of magnitude higher than is likely to happen from a loss of coolant accident.
But that's the point isn't it, how containment design is influenced now and that even American reactor's aren't immune to their own incident pit.
Nuclear power is safe, practical (as in we have the technology now), and cheap
How? Are the mine tailings safe, the processing of the ore cheap and is enrichment suddenly not so carbon intensive? What about de-commissioning of the reactor cores, is that cheap. What about plutonium storage, is that practical yet and the left over U238, found a practical use besides weapons and aircraft counterweights yet.
And since there is no real net-energy gain it's perfectly reasonable to say commercial Nuclear Power is unsafe, not-practical, expensive and a pointless waste of resources that is distracting us from real long term solutions that might actually work and not have the issues nuclear has. Nuclear might have a place, one day, when our materials technology has advanced enough to resolve many of the issues that the first 50 years of nuclear operation has uncovered.
The failure mode at Chernobyl was very specific to the design of the RBMK-1000
Ok, I should have been more specific. I was referring to the containment structure, and a loss of containment from that structure.
the Chernobyl accident was triggered by an operator scram'ing the reactor.
Which in itself is a serious concern for that design. But, IIRC, they scram'd it *after* they were running tests on the reactor at less than the prescribed turbine power output (250Mw vs 750Mw) which didn't allow enough time for the diesel generator/coolant pumps to start operating as the turbine pump(s) wound down. i.e the (excessively) high positive void coefficient was caused by running the tests outside of the specification for the tests and not enough light water was present in the reactor core to prevent the control rod insertion contributing to the reaction running away. Begs the questions, if they could have prevented the disaster had they realised what was happening sooner and were able to carefully increase the light water supply, if the core was damaged by the 'tests' (because I think some control rods jammed) and, more importantly, how such a serious operational error was ever allowed to occur.
In any case, my point is that if Chernobyl had a reasonable containment facility maybe the accident would not have had such serious consequences due to human error, and why reducing a robust containment facility for economic reasons in proposed American reactors is not wise.
.. maybe dough its possible to store the energy inside compressed air..
I was thinking the same thing, construct compressed air tanks into the tower structures and run a generator off that. It certainly introduces some new ways to design wind power. I guess the main issue with wind power is capturing it when it is available and releasing the energy when it is required.
Slashdot Mirror
Your comment demonstrates a clear mis-understanding of why the NRC exists. As reactors age they get more dangerous and harder to operate. Only a system observation of the nuclear process can reveal what is referred to as 'Accident Sequence Precursors' which is why a reactor is 'licensed' by the NRC.
The Plant's "red tape" management is geared to keeping the reactor operating, the NRC's "red tape" is gear to preventing an accident. If a reactor just stopped when something went wrong then it might be ok but Nuclear power is like using a hand grenade as a hammer and saying to yourself 'well, it's never gone off before', every time you use it.
Military applications have larger budgets, aren't expected to produce a profit, have different design criteria and safety rating systems to determine them fit for operation. If they do not meet those criteria, they are not operated (i.e Nuclear Subs). If you want to understand why read The Columbia Accident Investigation Board's final report of how Military vehicles are kept safe.
By all means, can we have the engineering and safety culture that comes with it?
I'm afraid of ignorance. Especially ignorance of the science and facts associated with the nuclear power process, especially here where people are usually more skeptical. I haven't met anyone capable of sustaining an advocacy of the Nuclear process when confronted with the facts. Nuclear advocacy here generally means resorting to ad-hominem attack, as these two thinly veiled comments demonstrate.
I'd be happy with just 'informed'. There are so many problems with nuclear power process that you could be 'informed' about, yet "pithy" comments such as yours get modded 'insightful'; perhaps because you say what the group think wants to believe. If you want to use a military methodology why don't you listen to the dissenting voices that have something to say about the nuclear industry and evaluate those comments with some pragmatism slashdot, instead of just accepting the 'marketingspeak' all techies hate to hear - except if it's to do with nuclear. It's all to common for these sorts of comments to be modded up, it's like there is a 'twitter' for nuclear power.
Credible Nuclear advocacy cannot exist while the nuclear process is layered with failures, obscuration of facts and blame shifting.
Nuclear power provides no opportunity for technologists. Solar and wind power provide opportunities for extending the technology industry by creating a framework for driving efficiency into the entire energy industry. Instead of 'just throwing more watts at it', if we were smart technologists, we would would be identifying the areas in the energy industry where adding intelligence to power management saves power, creates more technology jobs and investment into sustainable medium to long term energy solutions and infrastructure.
So in other words, it's not really a TRIGA reactor, it's something else with new types of failure modes - accounting for the fact that it's actually a new design kinda sorta like triga. TRIGA's have a lot more containment than, than, well there is no documentation for this type of reactors containment is there, packed soil perhaps?
by all means, buy those cameras, employ those bored guards, no need to concern yourselves,,, move along.
But the spent fuel would be a nice dirty bomb wouldn't it.
Figure's, Nuclear power provides the solution for us to burn more oil, to make more greenhouse gasses, so we have to have these reactors. The solution all makes sense now.
*gulp* - not from where I'm living please. I'd rather use solar and wind and change my energy consumption habit's so I use less energy. And the problem of leaks into the local water table - any solution for that besides? 'places hand on heart' - "these reactors will not leak".
I call bullshit 160 ton core * 104 reactors * 1 year = So what you are saying is the entire core of every reactor in the U.S is replaced once every year. Even if you were talking about all 450 odd reactors around the world your talking about a full core replacement once every four year which is not consistent with the common refuelling cycle of 1/3 of a core every approximately 2 years. What fraction are you talking about? 2/3's of existing consumption! This is not a significant advantage.
Even so lets examine this claim.., 16,000 tons. Let's see, to get a kilogram of uranium you have to process 500 tons of hard ore (almost no soft ore left) - and even that is assuming an extremely optimistic extraction efficiency approaching %50 AND assumes you have a high grade ore. Where do you intend to get this uranium from with supplies already dwindling and competing with existing users for supply?.
Yes, I can see it now, electricity too cheap to meter...
I call Bullshit. Again Magically these reactors have solved the materials problems t
Proposed Pebble Bed Modular Reactors (PBMR) are designed with exactly the reduced containment that Chernobyl was built with, produce deadlier waste and have deadlier failure modes. They have been designed this way to reduce the expense of building them, as the sheer volume of concrete required to build a reactor containment is one of the highest input costs as well as the third greatest contributor of greenhouse gasses.
That's incorrect. Fissile ash is *very* radioactive, that's why it has a relatively short half life of 600 years, before you calculate the daughter products.
To quote the Union of Concerned Scientists assessment of the security of Nuclear Instalations.
So why would you expect them to be incorporated into this design. I can tell you from looking at the design specs they have dramatically less containment. Why is there no time for boring? 25 meters into compacted soil is nothing and would just look like a team inspecting the reactor. You have no idea what sort of failure modes can be bought about by sabotaging the reactor. A basic attack would involve boring a small hole to the top of the reactor, depositing the charge, filling the hole and leaving. I would anticipate the damage done to the reactor casing sufficient to allow it to lose containment or worse.
Yes, yes, that's probably how various intelligence services reports were treated just before 9/11. In reality terrorists would be thinking "so many targets, so little time"
And like any good social engineering attack you'll be completely at ease with what the 'terrorists' are doing until it is too late.
And the pollution caused to Australia's water table by Acid leach mining.
Back in 1997 the trend for Licencee Event Reports and Accident Sequence Precursors was going up. Of the 563 design basis issues for 1997 only 238 were found due to a deliberate effort, the remainder were 'self revealing' and the bulk identified by 'luck'. Of the 104 reactors operating in the U.S 41 experienced year plus outages to restore their safety levels and 10 reactors did it twice.
This is consistent with today's reactor design, which has a 40 year life span. During the early phase of the plants life span most of the operational issues are resolved so that in the reactors middle age it has a relatively trouble free operation. Now that the reactors are approaching the end of thier life span the materials that the reactor were built with are becoming embrittled, corroded, seals begin to fail. Rather than efficiency of operation, they are forced to squeeze everything they can get from it because once that reactor is shut down it's a tomb that cannot be disassembled for ten to a hundred years. It then incurs ongoing operational energetic expenditure to maintain the cooling systems and contains elements such as cobalt 60, iron 55, tritium, carbon 14 and calcium 41 amongst others. Finally a reactor incurs ten to fifteen times the energy cost of a coal or gas power plant to dismantle.
Which is necessary because of the same management failures ("it's never been a problem before" - mindset) that crashed the space shuttle on both occasions. The Davis-Besse plant is a good example. The operational characteristics of the plant itself warned the management team there was a problem. Water filters were being replaced once every few days where are it used to be once every few months, instead of investigate the problem management ordered the filters to continually be replaced. The cause was a leak of borated water that was corroding the reactor head. As these reactors age more oversight will be necessary to overcome the lack of knowledge of accident sequence precursors at the management level.
To quote the NRC documentation of the incident A significant release of radiation from the plant's auxiliary building, performed to relieve pressure on the primary system and avoid curtailing the flow of coolant to the core. In reality large amounts of contamination were released beyond Nuclear Industry assurances. The gamma radiation monitors on the top of the auxiliary building were not designed to measure such high concentrations and they went off the scale when the accident *began*, the release of contamination went on for several *days*. Estimates were based on thermoluscent dosimeters on the fence and Alpha and Beta emissions weren't even measured.
Because of the weather conditions it was known that emissions from TMI travelled a long way and were measured in Albany, NY. Joeseph Hendrie (former chairman of the NRC) was quoted (at the time) "We are operating almost totally in the in the blind, [Governor Thornburgh's] information is ambiguous, mine is non-existent and - I don't know - it's like a couple of blind me staggering around making decisions."
Expert measurements of radioactive iodine in farm animals nearby revealed Nuclear Industry estimates of contamination released to be 'grossly underestimated'. Radioactive iodine, plutonium, strontium, americium, 172,000 cubic feet of high level radioactive water, large quantities of krypton 85 and later that year 8 million litres of radioactive water containing tritium, that was evaporated deliberately, were all part of the toxicity that was released.
Dr Carl Johnson, an expert in radiation related diseases asked the NRC and DOE to do a survey to look for some of these elements in the respirable dust around TMI after the accident and they refused.
Hundreds of local people reported a variety of symptoms and signs consistent with acute radiation sickness, which manifest when people are exposed to whole-body doses of radiation around 100 rads - a high level of exposure.
Dr Gordon McLeod, Pennsylvania health commissioner at the time of the accident, noted that the number of babies born with hypothyroidism doubled in the nine months following the accident. He postulated that this was because the thyroid gland is was affected by the large quantities of iodine 131 that escaped during the accident. Dr McLeod's findings indicate that if babies and children exposed are not investigated epidemiologically TMI will not be identified as the cause. Dr McLeod was fired by Governor Thornburgh just six months after he took office.
A study performed by Pennsylvania State University, College of Engineereing, on milk in March 1979 found readings as high as 21,300 picocuries per litre, but despite a quote from Thomas Gerusky, then director of Radiological Health from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources "If we ever found a thousand picocuries we would take action", no investigation was conducted.
Cancer incidence in the exposed population was studied only through the years 1981-1985, a few years after TMI, despite the fact that the latent period of carcinogenisis is 2 to 60 years. There have been virtually no further epidemiological studies of the exposed population performed since that time, although a 2002 report issued by the National cancer Institute and Centers for Disease Control found that Pennslyvania had the seventh-highest cancer incidence in the nation. If you have a link to further studies I would like to see them.
You're probably not aware that radioactive elements accumulate in the food chain. Radioactive isotopes analogue elements that living creatures need to survive, and we ea
mod parent up.
The American Way!
Maybe it's a way of extending the DoD's budget by another $17B.
Oh, the humanity.
Desiderata
Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.I found your link more interesting than the actual article, thanks. If I had mod point's I'd give em to you.
No, I'm Bruce Perens.
I have considered it, and read the science concerning the entire process. I recommend that you educate yourself with matters of importance rather than correcting my spelling.
Now go off and learn about the Net Energy Return of the entire nuclear process.
Frankly your statement is idiotic, to quote the NRC documentation of the incident A significant release of radiation from the plant's auxiliary building, performed to relieve pressure on the primary system and avoid curtailing the flow of coolant to the core. That's coolant is officially recognised contamination. You show a strong desire to be deceived by the man, despite the available evidence.
So where did the steam from the primary cooling system water go when the valve, that caused the accident, was stuck open. Did it dissipate into another dimension. Did the water say to itself 'gee I should be inside the reactor - boi am I gonna be in trouble' or was it evaporated into the atmosphere. I bet that since it was in contact with the fuel rods the "contamination" said to itself, 'boi I should really stay inside today'.
In reality large amounts of contamination were released beyond Nuclear Industry assurances. The gamma radiation monitors on the top of the auxiliary building were not designed to measure such high concentrations and they went off the scale when the accident *began*, the release of contamination went on for several *days*. Estimates were based on thermoluscent dosimeters on the fence and Alpha and Beta emissions weren't even measured.
Because of the weather conditions it was known that emissions from TMI travelled a long way and were measured in Albany, NY. Joeseph Hendrie (former chairman of the NRC) was quoted (at the time) "We are operating almost totally in the in the blind, [Governor Thornburgh's] information is ambiguous, mine is non-existent and - I don't know - it's like a couple of blind me staggering around making decisions." - So if they didn't know, how is it you do?
Expert measurements of radioactive iodine in farm animals nearby revealed Nuclear Industry estimates of contamination released to be 'grossly underestimated'. Radioactive iodine, plutonium, strontium, americurium, 172,000 cubic feet of high level radioactive water, large quantities of krypton 85 and later that year 8 million litres of radioactive water containing tritium that were evaporated deliberately were all part of the toxic cocktail that was released.
IOW, that straw man glows in the dark.
Radioactive gases are vented fortnightly from *every* nuclear reactor as NRC standard policy. Why should these elements be released into the environment under any circumstances let alone as a standard operating procedure? All reactors leak, that's a factor of their operation, the question is "How dangerous?".
And that's before we consider accidental or unauthorised venting.
I mean when you examine the end to end energy expenditure of commercial nuclear power generation the energy put in is less than the energy extracted. Since energy is the only real currency in the world, not dollars, you want to make sure that over the entire industrial process the amount of joules you extract is more than the amount of joules you put in. A characteristic of Nuclear energy is that it continues to consume energy *after* it has produced energy.
To begin it takes so much energy to get the ore in the first place. 2.4 gigajoules per ton for soft ores and 5.5 gigajoules per ton for hard hard ores. To get a kilogram of uranium you have to process 500 tons of hard ore (as there is almost no soft ore left) - and even that is assuming an extremely optimistic extraction efficiency approaching %50 and that assumes you have a high grade ore. Yet you still have to factor in the energetic remediation of the mine tailing. Like Oil, all the cheap uranium is gone.
Today's reactor design have a roughly 40 year life span. During the early phase of the plants life span most of the operational issues were resolved so that in the reactors middle age it has a relativley trouble free operation. Now that the reactors are approaching the end of thier life span the materials that the reactor were built with are becoming embrittled, corroded, seals begin to fail. It's not efficiency of operation, it's squezing everything you can get because once that reactor is shut down - it's a tomb that cannot be disassembled for ten to a hundred years, good bye profit hello ongoing operational costs, hello cobalt 60, iron 55, tritium, carbon 14 and calcium 41 amongst others, hello ten to fifteen times the energy cost of a coal or gas power plant to dismantle. Who do you think will wear those costs?
Then there is the CRUD - Chalk River Unidentified Deposits, where a lethal combination of highly radioactive fission and actinide elements from leaking fuel rods in the reactor core itself were discovered. Every reactor has it and *safe* dismantling of the 450 odd reactors worldwide will have to deal with a energy expenditure of almost half of the entire facilities construction on the core alone and we havent even started talking about the cooling water and radioactive hydrogen that is just dumped into the ocean. Demolishing a decommissioned nuclear reactor has not successfully been performed safely on a large scale yet. Nuclear industry proponents tout the amount of energy that can be extracted from a gram of Uranium but rarely factor the *Net Energy Return* of the Nuclear fuel cycle, associated infrastructure and the long term storage of toxic waste. Profit only occurs if the taxpayer bares the expense of yet another externality.
And I haven't even mentioned the energetic costs of remediating byproducts from the enrichment process, the transport and infrastructure costs to move 70,000 tons of plutonium or the energetic costs of constructing a geologically stable containment facility in granite like the Swiss are attempting.
How has the amount of subsidies spent in the US on Nuclear Energy been a reasonable investment that has yeilded returns energetic or otherwise.
I'm not suggesting that they are and that's the problem, there is no long term thinking. I am suggesting that developing a long term plan for how to deal with the mess this generation of the N
Well Shawn, should I consider the mining, and enrichment process? What about containment (or lack of)? or are you talking about a narrow 'just the day to day running of the plant' type incident? But since nuclear powers externalities and pollutants persist well beyond a run of the mill power plant and accumulate up the food chain how do we know how many people Chernobyl or TMI are *still* killing? It's not as if the isotope has a little flag on it saying "this strontium 90 was brought to you by an accidental venting that occured from a reactor half way across the country"
I'm talking about cancer Shawn. Isotopes analogue elements that our bodies seek from food producing different cancers, radon 220 that causes lung cancer, or radium 226 that causes bone cancers. Care to describe what xenon, argon or krypton decay into and the health side effects of those elements once ingested? What about iodine 131 or ceasium 137?
Over what timescale Shawn? a minute, a day, a week a year. If, of the 7 million deaths from cancer this year, a million of them came from nuclear industry externalities, is it less of a disaster because it took those people 15 years to die? Of course conveniently there is no data available. Radioactive isotopoes escape from *whatever* part of the nuclear industry (could be mining, DU dust) who knows? and it's injested, hey it's an alpha emmiter, bingo, cancer. What percentage of yearly cancer deaths will you attribute to the Nuclear industry, 10%, 5% 1%, pick a number Shawn because we can be certain that it's above 0%. If of the millions of people that die from cancer each year (worldwide 58 Million this year), is it somehow less because they didn't actually have anything to do with the nuclear industry at all?
Bah it's ok, it's a future generations problem isn't it Shawn? NIMG. One hunder years after all these reactors stop functioning how radioactive wil they be? What containment will still function? What about two hundred or three hundred years, four five, six hundred years? Even at 1% of today's numbers for cancer, every year how big are those numbers?
Bah, it's all speculation though isn't it Shawn, it's ok, go back to your affluent lifestyle, it's ok to tax future generations, don't have any concerns for your kids, they will be fine. They will sort the problems out, they won't blame you.
Oh, it's a fact is it? How are they safer Shawn, why don't you enlighten me exactly how they are safer and exactly where the 'modern' reactors you describe are. Tell me why 41 of the nuclear power reactors licensed by the NRC (AEC) experienced year-plus outages to restore safety levels (10 reactors did it twice). Tell me how you know better than the US House Committee on Government Operations who concluded (of nuclear reactors);
Mismanagement was a problem during construction. Mismanagement was a problem during operation. Mismanagement will be a challenge during construction and operation of new reactorsJust how are you going to fix that?
No, it's the dirtiest, dumbest most energy inefficient way known to man to boil water.
propaganda is a tyrant's tool, used to lead the weak minded so they don't feel the need to ask questions and think for themselves.
Don't be a wooly sheep Shawn, don't be a fanboi.
I was having a perfectly reasonable and civil conversation until you came along and stuck your illiterate thoughtless 2 cents in. Try reading my thread properly before your little, stoned, addled mind hits 'submit', Fucktard.
1. IIRC, the sequence of events that occurred at Chernobyl. i.e If I Recall Correctly the events leading up to the Chernobyl disaster, i.e I don't care why it blew up - it fucking blew up - and there was no containment building. 2. I compared proposed PBMR designs with RBMK. You know, graphite covered fuel kernels, helium gas cooled, no containment building required. 3. I said 'Proposed new generation 'once-through' series' reactors, like the AP-1000, are designed with significantly reduced containment.' - where in that separate paragraph did I compare them with RBMK?. Answer, you were so wasted on whatever you were smoking you saw it that way.It's the first time I've ever said IIRC and some fuckwit like you decided to use it to attack me because they had no valid contribution to make.
And you get to show off your true idiotic nature.
Where did I make that comparison, lay off the pot multiplexo - you are smoking it too much.
Ignorant people like you defend nuukler bower and reveal your inability to gather even the most rudimentary facts about the end to end operation if the Nuclear Industry. Fanboy shrill-shills, such as yourself, are always there ready to attack anyone who make the vaguest criticism of the Nuclear Power Industry whilst unable to make any objective defence of the industry without resorting to the ad-hominem attack.
I've never seen nuclear advocacy make an objective arguments that stands up to analysis. When presented with the facts your arguments fold or you become abusive, and now, even properly reading what someone has written is too much to ask. I've endured your type of tiresome ignorance for so many years in an attempt to raise awareness of the need to drive some serious industry wide improvements into the Nuclear Industry. That we need to analyse the last 50 years of operation and confront the serious issues which, if you make a realistic and honest assessment of the Nuclear Industry, are there, so we can move forward.
I have supported research into better reactor technology so we can address plutonium disposal pragmatically, but even the most rudimentary step forward, establishing a geologically stable granite containment facility, is impossible with people like you around. Fuck you, I may as well be 'anti' because even the most pedantically checked critical post is seen as 'anti', and I still get a serve from the 'anti's. Whilst you stick your ignorant dumb ass belligerent head in the sand, pretend everything is a-ok, and get fucked by propaganda. Fucking think for yourself you Pwnd fucking sheep, WAKE UP.
Once upon a time, IIRC, I read someone post
I wanted to refer to fanboy's as 'shrills' in reference to the loud unpleasant noise they make, but the word 'shill', 'one who participates in a swindle to dupe others' was equally appropriate. But now I have made up a new word that, whilst sounds old, is new and describes your kind precisely multiplexo,
fan; describing an overly enthusiastic supporter of a cause,
boi; which in Portuguese means; a c
Well I did say If I Recall Correctly. According to the wikipedia article about the accident there were several contributing factors. I don't study it for a living, so maybe I've missed something. The reaction was inhibited by xenon poisoning because the reactor was unintentionally reduced to less than 10 percent of it's output and the operators almost completely removed the control rods, and then
Slowly, the reactor's power only increased to 200 MW, less than a third of the minimum required for the experiment. Yet the experiment was continued.
I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm simply pointing out that there are several seemingly insignificant contributing factors here, the most significant being the human factor overriding the safety systems.
The point is the reactor blew up because the operators were digging an incident pit, to which no industrial system is immune.
I didn't say it was.
But that's the point isn't it, how containment design is influenced now and that even American reactor's aren't immune to their own incident pit.
How? Are the mine tailings safe, the processing of the ore cheap and is enrichment suddenly not so carbon intensive? What about de-commissioning of the reactor cores, is that cheap. What about plutonium storage, is that practical yet and the left over U238, found a practical use besides weapons and aircraft counterweights yet.
And since there is no real net-energy gain it's perfectly reasonable to say commercial Nuclear Power is unsafe, not-practical, expensive and a pointless waste of resources that is distracting us from real long term solutions that might actually work and not have the issues nuclear has. Nuclear might have a place, one day, when our materials technology has advanced enough to resolve many of the issues that the first 50 years of nuclear operation has uncovered.
Ok, I should have been more specific. I was referring to the containment structure, and a loss of containment from that structure.
Which in itself is a serious concern for that design. But, IIRC, they scram'd it *after* they were running tests on the reactor at less than the prescribed turbine power output (250Mw vs 750Mw) which didn't allow enough time for the diesel generator/coolant pumps to start operating as the turbine pump(s) wound down. i.e the (excessively) high positive void coefficient was caused by running the tests outside of the specification for the tests and not enough light water was present in the reactor core to prevent the control rod insertion contributing to the reaction running away. Begs the questions, if they could have prevented the disaster had they realised what was happening sooner and were able to carefully increase the light water supply, if the core was damaged by the 'tests' (because I think some control rods jammed) and, more importantly, how such a serious operational error was ever allowed to occur.
In any case, my point is that if Chernobyl had a reasonable containment facility maybe the accident would not have had such serious consequences due to human error, and why reducing a robust containment facility for economic reasons in proposed American reactors is not wise.
I was thinking the same thing, construct compressed air tanks into the tower structures and run a generator off that. It certainly introduces some new ways to design wind power. I guess the main issue with wind power is capturing it when it is available and releasing the energy when it is required.