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Three Mile Island was a PARTIAL meltdown that was contained within the pressure vessel and did not even contaminate the inside of the containment vessel or the building.
Three Mile Island was a PARTIAL meltdown that was contained within the pressure vessel and did not even contaminate the inside of the containment vessel or the building.
Correct, TMI was a success story to the back up systems in place.
Japan is a failure, building your back up generators on ground level in a tsunami zone is beyond hindsight, it was just stupid.
So in light of the current situation in Japan do you think it will set us back even farther or will common sense prevail. I say full steam ahead on building Nuculer plants. We have wasted enough years already for no reason.
Of course we should move forward on them. But use Japan (and other disasters) as learning opportunities on how to secure reactors against disasters like this.
If the engineers had a second thought of "should we put our emergency back up generators on ground level in a tsunami zone", then all of this could have been avoided.
I repeat
THE 9.0 EARTHQUAKE DID LITTLE TO NO DAMAGE TO THE PLANT IN JAPAN.
Anyone who tells you otherwise isn't looking at the facts. After the quake the plant functioned as it was supposed to, the rods lowered, stopped the reaction, and cooling began. When the tsunami hit and took out the generators, that caused the plant to have this problem.
Its a 10 to 20 story facility, if they had only put the generators on the 4th floor, no problems. Hell we build cell sites in flood zones here on the gulf, but we put them on platforms so they aren't on the ground.
I can't believe this was overlooked, but to ban nuclear plants because of an stupid blunder would be idiotic.
Lastest I heard on this is that the Diesel buildings survived both the quake and flood intact. However, the Japanese use above ground Fuel Oil storage tanks that were destroyed, thus rendering the EDGs useless. Most, if not all US plants use underground Diesel Fuel Oil storage vaults. Not sure what the Japanese were thinking when they did their failure analysis on this one!
Build nuke plants. Just don't put them on major fault lines. I think it would also be good to have an emergency source of water near by to allow them to be cooled for 2-3 days while the rods cooled off after being shut down. The water should be able to get into the reactor without having to be pumped, in case of electrical failure. A large water tower type structure might work or simply building the plant at the base of a hill where the water was on top of the hill. That way gravity would allow the plant to be cooled without power in an emergency.
So in light of the current situation in Japan do you think it will set us back even farther or will common sense prevail. I say full steam ahead on building Nuculer plants. We have wasted enough years already for no reason.
I voted no because we haven't figured out how to handle the nuclear waste. Do we bury it in some mountain in Nevada? Do we recycle it? Do we launch it into the sun? I don't know, but I do know that I don't want it in my backyard.
Please drop all of the insults regarding my potential jobs, it adds nothing to the discussion.
It's important because you don't have access to actual information, like someone actually working in the industry does. You aren't sharing information, you're sharing the anti-nuclear agenda, which could be cured by contacting your local college and asking them to invite a nuclear engineer to give a seminar. Of course, only those who want to learn, can, so that advice is more for others. Unfortunately, plant employees (no matter how high their level) are discouraged from discussing nuclear power to reporters or even neighbors, so the only people speaking out to the media are those who have no technical information or education.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hilgi
No nuke plant in the world would be able to secure enough insurance to cover their potential loss.
With juries filled with uneducated technophobes manipulated by corrupt lawyers that get 1/3 of the settlement and who care nothing for the truth, it is true there could be a frivolous lawsuit may award trillion-dollar damages for things that are scientifically impossible, but that's why they have appeals (and generally judges are much more intelligent than juries). Nuclear plants do carry their own insurance, and let me point out again: how many people have died due to nuclear accidents in the US? That would be NONE, EVER. Too bad natural gas lines blow up and burn people alive almost weekly, and there are constant deaths due to oil refinery explosions, coal mining accidents, boiler explosions, etc.
With ambulance-chasing lawyers having made health care unaffordable for almost everyone, as well as reducing the quality of life for everyone thanks to ridiculous insurance costs, I'm surprised anyone would think lawyers are a good thing for society--particular when the "green" choices are not grid-reliable, and coal, oil and matural gas cause massive pollution as well as keeping us in constant foreign wars and being self-limiting.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hilgi;18282201If the power companies could find the coverage from private insurers the premium costs would be massive. They don't have to do that because the government covers the potential insurance benefit for them. In other words a subsidy.[/QUOTE
Sorry, but our plants DO cover insurance, and as you already noted, the government would only (potentially) kick in IF THE COSTS EXCEEDED $12.6 billion in 1957 dollars. So obviously the government expects plants to carry insurance for the amount between $0 and $12.6 billion, right?
They are suing the government but the money they have paid will need to be used forever. Obviously waste disposal was not a well thought out plan.
FYI, a 2-unit nuclear plant can run for 40 years and keep ALL of its waste on-site, in what amounts to a back-yard sized swimming pool, without problems or danger (unlike coal and oil plants, which pump unbelievable amounts of tonnage of pollution into the air, water and ground). Water is a great buffer to radiation; the waste doesn't have to go anywhere. Yucca Mountain was yet another ruse by anti-nuclear activists to create an issue out of a non-issue, and the government was delighted to steal countless billions from ratepayers across the nation while providing nothing in return.
Half-life means the time it takes for the stuff to disappear--yes, disappear--so actually, radioactive materials do NOT need to be stored forever. In fact, if they are highly radioactive, half of the stuff is gone in a few months. Anything with a half-life of thousands of years is not very dangerous.
I think it's time I stopped trying to educate those who have no intention of learning, and who making things up as they go along, with absolutely no knowledge or education regarding nuclear power.
Most people have no idea just how close we are to letting these things destroy us.
We just put in a huge solar panel system on our farm and are going to be erecting a windmill as well. We expect to be able to get off the grid. But I'm wondering, is it possible for all of America to get all its power from wind and solar? Maybe that's a dumb question with an obvious answer, but I'm just starting to learn about this and would like to know. You seem to have a lot of knowledge. Because we have a lot of acreage and the ability to put up a huge solar panel system and a windmill, it will work for us. But how would it work for densely populated cities?
Half-life means the time it takes for the stuff to disappear--yes, disappear--so actually, radioactive materials do NOT need to be stored forever. In fact, if they are highly radioactive, half of the stuff is gone in a few months. Anything with a half-life of thousands of years is not very dangerous.
I think it's time I stopped trying to educate those who have no intention of learning, and who making things up as they go along, with absolutely no knowledge or education regarding nuclear power.
No, radioactive material does NOT "disappear". During the decay process radioactive material does not "disappear" - it CHANGES into another element. U-235 (for example) has a half-life of (from what I recall) something like 700 million years - during which time it half of it changes into Thorium 231 - which in turn later decays into Protactinium 231. That's just an example. Different radioactive elements break down into different elements.
Ken
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