I know it's bad but I like to repost and ponder in insight over the content of one the very first comment that was posted about the disaster:
It's funny because what is happening in Japan is exactly why Nuclear Power is SAFE!
An earthquake 7 times more powerful than the biggest it was built for hit, and all that happened to the reactors that didn't shut down cleanly was a small amount of radioactive noble gases, which decay within minutes. Even if the cores DO melt, they're safely contained in... wait for it... containment chambers!
People don't realize the amount of engineering that goes into nuclear to make it safe.
No, the batteries provide nowhere near the power required by the cooling system, this was explained on slashdot a few weeks ago by a guy working with the pumps (sorry no time to find the comment now). The cooling system consumes a large amount of the total electrical output of the plant (something between 10 and 20 percent, again from memory), no battery setup can provide this amount of energy. The batteries are only used to power the instrumentation and control mechanisms (valves etc).
And then you have to use vi, which is in itself a whole different world of pain. Good luck! ^Z^Z Shit how does this fucker work?! ^C quit exit ESC ** CARRIER LOST%%:.,*$£$$$
Yes but you're thinking western-style, Los Angeles anonymity here. He was living in a cosy small town full of middle-class military personel in a third-world country, so picture something like a small town in the Midwest: everybody knows it five minutes after you drop a fart. Frankly I don't buy it, to me it's clear he has been knowingly protected all this time, up to a point where he was possibly becoming to much of a drag and was given to the US. Although obviously this is pure speculation.
save it using a thumb-sized flash drive that he passed to a trusted courier
And how were those dozens of couriers coming in and out of his hideout during a ten-or-so year span not detected by the local population/police exactly? Doesn't this mean that he was positively harbored, hidden and protected by the whole local population? Didn't the US and the whole West bomb and invade the shit out of Afghanistan exactly because they were providing "safe harbor to terrorists"? So what are we waiting for exactly?
Oh wait a minute... Pakistan just like North Korea does have nuclear weapons. My bad. Nobody's gonna fuck with them. Iran must be horribly jealous.
Plus whatever they end up with is FAR from "low radioactivity", total bullshit, but as I said believe whatever you please or makes you feel comfortable.
very low radioactivity since France actually reprocesses their waste from older reactors into fuel for newer reactors
This is total bullshit, France's operator EDF admitted lately that only about 15% of the spend fuel can be reprocessed, the rest is sitting in open air waiting for Santa like everywhere else, I'm tired of hearing this bullshit, go look at Google that's not far away, or believe whatever bullshit you please, I'm not gonna click more for you.
The AP isn't alone in wanting more insight on the specifics of the raid
THIS is a hell of an understatement. I guess it would be closer to the truth to say that a few billion people don't feel alone in wanting more insight on the specifics of the raid.
Following the Fukushima accident I've asked several times about the Davis-Besse near miss. What happened there was that boric acid had beed leaking undetected from a crack onto the reactor chamber for more than ten year. When it was finally discovered, it had eaten through the 20 cm of the pressure vessel's steel (the so-called "first containment chamber"); the remaining barrier containing the reactor's material was the 1 cm (or 5 mm, not clear) internal stainless cladding of the vessel, bearing alone the 170 bars of internal pressure. The cladding had bulged but did not break - by mere luck one would say.
Had it eventually given, then the high-pressure reactor coolant would have escaped in a jet; due to the location of the leak, it could have jammed the adjacent control rod mechanism, preventing insertion of the rods. So the Davis-Besse plant was literally at that time half-an-inch away from a total loss of coolant accident with a core on full power and no way to stop it. Right in Ohio, in the middle of the US. What would have happened then? I've asked several times but the only response I got was basically Nothing to see here, move along.
Not that I like to dwelve in shaden-freude but really this kind of answer, coming from people who pride themselves so much of being smart and rational, looks disturbing. Shouldn't we try to assess the reality of the situation rather than build a fantasy world that suits our desires, conveniently ignoring uncomfortable facts?
the Fukushima disaster wasn't ultimately caused by a private company taking shortcuts
Yes it was (obviously). Read also this study (caution pdf) for some interesting insight on the probability of such a tsunami in Japan (hint: pretty high).
Mr. Fork also seems to imply that private companies do not have an incentive to engineer for safety. As if it is somehow more profitable for a private company if their nuclear reactors explode!
This is not how it works; large companies are not level-headed individuals who ponder for the most reasonable decisions. Companies are run by engineers whose reputations, well-being and yearly bonuses depend on the reliability and safety of their product, and by managers whose reputations, well-being and yearly bonuses depend on the profitability of the endeavour, also on the short term, and sometimes, depending on economic and financial conditions, on the very short term. Sometimes engineers quit because they feel they're not heard, sometimes managers are fired because they're not cutting costs aggressively enough. At the end of the day the decisions that are made can be very remote from the ideal, most reasonable decisions.
We have seen that with the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, we have seen that with the lost space shuttles, and probably with most large-scale industrial disasters at the end of the day. However I don't think that it has much to do with the fact that a company be public or private, it's more profound than that, it's almost a basic law of human nature from my understanding.
the 10-meter tsunami was the unforeseen circumstance
Worse, the risk was was really more disregarded than unforseen. A greater than 10m tsumani is to be expected once every 30 years in Japan according to this interesting study(caution, PDF). And TEPCO ignored tsunami warnings for years.
It was willful negligence on the part of the plant owner.
I whole-heartedly agree, and I would go as far as saying that really the same thing happened at Fukushima: the operator chose a questionable location to cut costs, underestimated the risks, then neglected the reports pointing to the dangerous situation. Same thing happened with the Deepwater Horizon rig (multiple cost-optimizing decisions led to the final accident), with both lost space shuttles (people neglected reports that were pushing for costly actions to be taken), with the Concorde aircraft (the particular design weakness that lead to the crash had been identified decades earlier), and probably with the majority of industrial accidents at the end of the day: security is as strong as the weakest link, and it is a basic overwhelming law of human nature to try and trim the string until it breaks, i.e., a major accident happens, at which point some efforts are made to compensate for the weakness, and the cycle goes on.
This is why I think people are perfectly justified in being so wary about nuclear power, notwithstanding newer safety measures or reactor designs: they know that the engineers strive to make it safe but the management strive to make it profitable; I don't even blame them for that, that's their job and even one could say their duty. But this means that accidents, leaks and spills are bound to happen, and the problem with radioactivity is that once it's there it's here to stay, people understand that pretty well in my opinion.
Slashdot Mirror
It's funny because what is happening in Japan is exactly why Nuclear Power is SAFE!
An earthquake 7 times more powerful than the biggest it was built for hit, and all that happened to the reactors that didn't shut down cleanly was a small amount of radioactive noble gases, which decay within minutes. Even if the cores DO melt, they're safely contained in ... wait for it... containment chambers!
People don't realize the amount of engineering that goes into nuclear to make it safe.
As I always say: containment chambers indeed!
No, the batteries provide nowhere near the power required by the cooling system, this was explained on slashdot a few weeks ago by a guy working with the pumps (sorry no time to find the comment now). The cooling system consumes a large amount of the total electrical output of the plant (something between 10 and 20 percent, again from memory), no battery setup can provide this amount of energy. The batteries are only used to power the instrumentation and control mechanisms (valves etc).
And then you have to use vi, which is in itself a whole different world of pain. Good luck! ^Z^Z Shit how does this fucker work?! ^C quit exit ESC ** CARRIER LOST%%:.,*$£$$$
Yes sleeping does feel good.
Cs-137 was detected in eight prefectures, with values ranging from 3 Bq/m2 to 44 Bq/m2
How do those figure match with the recent aerial survey of the area?
Gamma dose rate for Fukushima prefecture was 1.7 Sv/h
I guess you must have your units wrong.
One possibility is it stems from fear
I understand believing this makes nuclear apologists feel good and "above the peons"; however I think it has more to do with distrust than fear.
WHO has stated that there is no evidence of any significant release of radiation
So why are they evacuating people then?
Yes but you're thinking western-style, Los Angeles anonymity here. He was living in a cosy small town full of middle-class military personel in a third-world country, so picture something like a small town in the Midwest: everybody knows it five minutes after you drop a fart. Frankly I don't buy it, to me it's clear he has been knowingly protected all this time, up to a point where he was possibly becoming to much of a drag and was given to the US. Although obviously this is pure speculation.
save it using a thumb-sized flash drive that he passed to a trusted courier
And how were those dozens of couriers coming in and out of his hideout during a ten-or-so year span not detected by the local population/police exactly? Doesn't this mean that he was positively harbored, hidden and protected by the whole local population? Didn't the US and the whole West bomb and invade the shit out of Afghanistan exactly because they were providing "safe harbor to terrorists"? So what are we waiting for exactly?
Oh wait a minute... Pakistan just like North Korea does have nuclear weapons. My bad. Nobody's gonna fuck with them. Iran must be horribly jealous.
Plus whatever they end up with is FAR from "low radioactivity", total bullshit, but as I said believe whatever you please or makes you feel comfortable.
very low radioactivity since France actually reprocesses their waste from older reactors into fuel for newer reactors
This is total bullshit, France's operator EDF admitted lately that only about 15% of the spend fuel can be reprocessed, the rest is sitting in open air waiting for Santa like everywhere else, I'm tired of hearing this bullshit, go look at Google that's not far away, or believe whatever bullshit you please, I'm not gonna click more for you.
No good will come of it.
Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
This was my exact feeling regarding the Iraq war!
The AP isn't alone in wanting more insight on the specifics of the raid
THIS is a hell of an understatement. I guess it would be closer to the truth to say that a few billion people don't feel alone in wanting more insight on the specifics of the raid.
The only answer is going to be dirty coal/shale/etc and something like a couple orders of magnitude increase in research to find something else.
And maybe reducing wastage to begin with? No? Is this a crazy idea?
Yes and I didn't get sick this year, last year neither, so this shows that I can keep on smoking as much as I want since it's perfectly safe.
Following the Fukushima accident I've asked several times about the Davis-Besse near miss. What happened there was that boric acid had beed leaking undetected from a crack onto the reactor chamber for more than ten year. When it was finally discovered, it had eaten through the 20 cm of the pressure vessel's steel (the so-called "first containment chamber"); the remaining barrier containing the reactor's material was the 1 cm (or 5 mm, not clear) internal stainless cladding of the vessel, bearing alone the 170 bars of internal pressure. The cladding had bulged but did not break - by mere luck one would say.
Had it eventually given, then the high-pressure reactor coolant would have escaped in a jet; due to the location of the leak, it could have jammed the adjacent control rod mechanism, preventing insertion of the rods. So the Davis-Besse plant was literally at that time half-an-inch away from a total loss of coolant accident with a core on full power and no way to stop it. Right in Ohio, in the middle of the US. What would have happened then? I've asked several times but the only response I got was basically Nothing to see here, move along.
Not that I like to dwelve in shaden-freude but really this kind of answer, coming from people who pride themselves so much of being smart and rational, looks disturbing. Shouldn't we try to assess the reality of the situation rather than build a fantasy world that suits our desires, conveniently ignoring uncomfortable facts?
So it's more like a nightmare come true?
Stop ruining our beloved fantasies with your damn facts!
the Fukushima disaster wasn't ultimately caused by a private company taking shortcuts
Yes it was (obviously). Read also this study (caution pdf) for some interesting insight on the probability of such a tsunami in Japan (hint: pretty high).
Mr. Fork also seems to imply that private companies do not have an incentive to engineer for safety. As if it is somehow more profitable for a private company if their nuclear reactors explode!
This is not how it works; large companies are not level-headed individuals who ponder for the most reasonable decisions. Companies are run by engineers whose reputations, well-being and yearly bonuses depend on the reliability and safety of their product, and by managers whose reputations, well-being and yearly bonuses depend on the profitability of the endeavour, also on the short term, and sometimes, depending on economic and financial conditions, on the very short term. Sometimes engineers quit because they feel they're not heard, sometimes managers are fired because they're not cutting costs aggressively enough. At the end of the day the decisions that are made can be very remote from the ideal, most reasonable decisions.
We have seen that with the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, we have seen that with the lost space shuttles, and probably with most large-scale industrial disasters at the end of the day. However I don't think that it has much to do with the fact that a company be public or private, it's more profound than that, it's almost a basic law of human nature from my understanding.
the 10-meter tsunami was the unforeseen circumstance
Worse, the risk was was really more disregarded than unforseen. A greater than 10m tsumani is to be expected once every 30 years in Japan according to this interesting study(caution, PDF). And TEPCO ignored tsunami warnings for years.
No nation whose leader has sworn to destroy another nation has the right to have any sort of weapons at all.
Besides Iran never sworn to destroy another nation.
Just like in the general population...
It was willful negligence on the part of the plant owner.
I whole-heartedly agree, and I would go as far as saying that really the same thing happened at Fukushima: the operator chose a questionable location to cut costs, underestimated the risks, then neglected the reports pointing to the dangerous situation. Same thing happened with the Deepwater Horizon rig (multiple cost-optimizing decisions led to the final accident), with both lost space shuttles (people neglected reports that were pushing for costly actions to be taken), with the Concorde aircraft (the particular design weakness that lead to the crash had been identified decades earlier), and probably with the majority of industrial accidents at the end of the day: security is as strong as the weakest link, and it is a basic overwhelming law of human nature to try and trim the string until it breaks, i.e., a major accident happens, at which point some efforts are made to compensate for the weakness, and the cycle goes on.
This is why I think people are perfectly justified in being so wary about nuclear power, notwithstanding newer safety measures or reactor designs: they know that the engineers strive to make it safe but the management strive to make it profitable; I don't even blame them for that, that's their job and even one could say their duty. But this means that accidents, leaks and spills are bound to happen, and the problem with radioactivity is that once it's there it's here to stay, people understand that pretty well in my opinion.
Sincerely interested here: how would you categorize the Davis-Besse near miss on this scale?