Fission

Discuss life, the universe, and everything with other members of this site. Get to know your fellow polywell enthusiasts.

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Schneibster
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Post by Schneibster »

Zixinus wrote:
1. Greedy utility companies shorting on design or monitoring because government oversight is insufficient to prevent it;
2. Greedy countries using the technology to manufacture nuclear weapons;
3. Countries with a desperate need for energy using nuclear reactors with insufficient safeguards because they can't afford them;
1. I don't know about other countries, but in the USA nuclear policy is over-regulated to a fault. And there are international agencies and groups that oversee nuclear plants and technology all over the world.
Brown's Ferry. Indian Point. Nuclear Fuel Services. The last is probably the most important example. Nuclear policy is not over-regulated in the US.
Zixinus wrote:2. The countries for which fission is available already have a nuclear stockpile. And it is solvable for these countries to operate their plants in other countries, paid by the non-nuclear country in question. My country has a nuclear power plant, but lacks nukes. We buy our fuel from the Russians.
While I agree with this, it doesn't answer all the worries about proliferation.
Zixinus wrote:3. Newer designs are much more cheaper, and safeguards cost less. Pebble bed reactors have their safeguards built-in.
Pebble bed reactors are quite a ways off. I've heard estimates of a decade or two. There are, however, other safer designs than many currently in operation, being built today, for example in France.

Here in the US, safety must be paramount. The reason most people here don't like the idea of a lot of reactors is because they don't trust the government or industry to make safety their most important goal. Until that trust is built, they never will.

Zixinus
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Post by Zixinus »

Brown's Ferry.
Oh yes, the hundreds and hundreds of people that non-died at Brown's Ferry is such a terrible tragedy if they would have died at all.

Of course they didn't, and even if it did, it would have created a mess but would have killed no more then Three Miles Island did. For which not to this day, has anybody died that can be clear attributed to that accident. Because unlike the Soviet Union that doesn't care if you live or die, Western reactors are designed and used properly.
Indian Point
What's with Indian Point? Environmentalists would love to shut it down and a good part of New York along it, but as of so far, nothing happened, except an old piece of shit equipment failing, which harmed no one. Something that one can expect with 30-40 years old equipment.
Nuclear Fuel Services
What of them? The only thing I can find is how many times they have been sued, and that they frick up once or twice. The one thing that I can find what they did in fact do, is accidentally spill some radioisotopes, however not enough to be dangerous.

To quote NRC:
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is considering the
amendment of Special Nuclear Material License SNM-124. The proposed
amendment will allow the licensee to reduce the source term at the site
through removal of contaminated soil from the Nuclear Fuel Services
(NFS) site in Erwin, Tennessee. The NRC has prepared an Environmental
Assessment (EA) in support of NFS' amendment request, in accordance
with 10 CFR part 51. The conclusion of the EA is a Finding of No
Significant Impact (FONSI) for the proposed licensing action.
All three anomalies so far failed to reach the body count that was found in Kennedy's car.
Nuclear policy is not over-regulated in the US.
It is, and fear-mongers that gain political power and fame, will continue to regulate it further. Nuclear plants that would have been more then economic are expensive because of over-regulation.

Environmentalists have been successful in preventing any new plant being built, and made sure that already working power plants are more expensive then they should be. Nuclear waste disposal is made ridiculous.

The fact that instead of nuclear plants, coal or oil plants are built that regularly release radioactive materials does not appear to bother anybody.
While I agree with this, it doesn't answer all the worries about proliferation.
Well then, I recommend this site: http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/

And just to note: anybody that can scavenge up the materials necessary to build a nuclear bomb, needs to test if it works or not.
Without testing, you have little to no chance to build a single nuclear bomb. Turning the nuclear bomb into a nuclear dud. Way too often.

There are satellites in orbit that detect any gamma rays given off by weapon testing, so if some low-down gang miraculously makes a bomb, they still need to test it, after which every nation on Earth will know about it, and the low-down gang members are dead men walking.
Here in the US, safety must be paramount. The reason most people here don't like the idea of a lot of reactors is because they don't trust the government or industry to make safety their most important goal. Until that trust is built, they never will.
Here is a good basis of thrust: unlike in the Soviet Union, human lives count in the USA.

Both corporations or governments have the best interest in safety, because if someone dies due to their fault, they will find themselves in a new level of hell.

No politician is interested in losing enormous amount of voters. No corporation is interested in losing enormous amount of money, and being blamed for deaths in accidents. No industry is interested in building something unsafe, because it poses risk and risk is avoided in the business world.

What do you think gives more money? An expensive power plant that gives its price over a decade, and continues to do profit for many more decades OR a cheap, half-assed work that will land you in jail if not lose several times the money saved due to lawsuits?

No one wants an accident, and everyone involved wants to build a proper power plant.

What needs to be done, is get over superstitious fears and start doing thing they way they should have been done decades ago.

Nanos
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Post by Nanos »

No one wants to be blamed for an accident, everyone covers their ass when an accident happens, and in the quest for profits, safety is squeezed often beyond safe limits, you only have to ask aircraft mechanics to hear about the awful level of maintence that goes on there on a regular basis.

Or the US space shuttle is another example.

This is one reason why its important to go for designs that are in inherently safer than others on the basis that people will mess up, that corners will be cut, that people will not work to the high levels we want, or expect, no matter which country they are in.

Regulations are an effort to try and make sure these mistakes do not happen, though as often the case, people falsify documentation and regulations are bypassed.

I've worked in various industries, spend countless hours reading reports from all manner of others and the same thing comes up time and time again, mistakes, lazy workers, managers who pass the buck, its very much a human condition and makes you wonder we ever manage to get anything working!

MSimon
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Testing

Post by MSimon »

Testing.

Actually you really don't need to test a Pu bomb explosively these days.

The critical part - the explosive trigger - can be tested with high speed cameras.

Consider all the testing that was done before exploding the first Pu bomb. All that could be done without making a very big nuclear noise.

The only reason to test is to make an announcement.

MSimon
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unlike the Soviet Union

Post by MSimon »

Zixinus says:

"unlike the Soviet Union"

Sadly too many places in the world are like the Soviet Union or worse.

Once the USA starts building a lot of nukes every one is going to want them.

A better idea is Polywells. You can choke them in a number of ways in microseconds. One easy way is to turn off the electron guns with control grids. Another way is to short out the anode supply.

Or you could flood the reactor with fuel causing a Paschen discharge. That might take a few milliseconds.

===

In any case the most dangerous time for civilization will be as its fruits disperse while too many people hold a tribal mentality. The Drs. Plot in Britain comes to mind.

In America it took a long time to civilize our Indians. Or look at how long it took to civilize France and Germany. We are still very close to our barbarian roots.

Generally I like the British attitude with respect to all problems. Muddle through. The perfect path is only apparent in hindsight.

Raising prosperity levels will initially lead to more troubles.

Schneibster
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Post by Schneibster »

Zixinus wrote:What do you think gives more money? An expensive power plant that gives its price over a decade, and continues to do profit for many more decades OR a cheap, half-assed work that will land you in jail if not lose several times the money saved due to lawsuits?

No one wants an accident, and everyone involved wants to build a proper power plant.

What needs to be done, is get over superstitious fears and start doing thing they way they should have been done decades ago.
What you have failed to note about the three incidents I selected (or perhaps knew but avoided acknowledging) is that all three involved major incompetence, and all three were covered up. And that's the problem.

The people who have the money to put into building a nuclear power plant are not competent to judge the competence of the people they hire to design, build, and run it, nor are they competent to judge the seriousness of the danger of a particular problem; and they have a strong financial motive for hiding any problem. They are also the people in charge. And again, that's the problem.

Like I said, human factors.

Schneibster
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Post by Schneibster »

Nanos wrote:No one wants to be blamed for an accident, everyone covers their ass when an accident happens, and in the quest for profits, safety is squeezed often beyond safe limits, you only have to ask aircraft mechanics to hear about the awful level of maintence that goes on there on a regular basis.

<snip>

Regulations are an effort to try and make sure these mistakes do not happen, though as often the case, people falsify documentation and regulations are bypassed.

I've worked in various industries, spend countless hours reading reports from all manner of others and the same thing comes up time and time again, mistakes, lazy workers, managers who pass the buck, its very much a human condition and makes you wonder we ever manage to get anything working!
My point precisely. Human factors.

Zixinus
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Post by Zixinus »

No one wants to be blamed for an accident, everyone covers their ass when an accident happens, and in the quest for profits, safety is squeezed often beyond safe limits, you only have to ask aircraft mechanics to hear about the awful level of maintence that goes on there on a regular basis.

Or the US space shuttle is another example.
The Space Shuttle is not an example Nanos. How many Space Shuttle do you see already built in the world and operating? Very few, and we have very little experience with it.

I recall that very few aircrafts crash nowadays, and that good design made it so.

Also, aircraft maintenance is not the same as nuclear engineering. Aircraft have to adept to a variety of conditions. A nuclear reactor on the other hand is a closed system, with the aim to keep it a closed system. Aircrafts are an open, moving system as jet engines rely on the incoming air to work at all, and if it stops, people die. A nuclear reactor however, is closed and if you shut it down, you get asked why you shut it down.

As for an accident, the companies involved will have a difficult time trying to cover their asses.
This is one reason why its important to go for designs that are in inherently safer than others on the basis that people will mess up, that corners will be cut, that people will not work to the high levels we want, or expect, no matter which country they are in.
Nanos, II generation reactors alone are planned with allot of safety features in mind, quite a bit accounting for screw-ups from the operating engineers. III generation are very difficult to mess with. To mess up IV generation reactors, you need don't need incompetence and stupidity anymore, you need downright insanity.
"unlike the Soviet Union"

Sadly too many places in the world are like the Soviet Union or worse.
And these countries do not hold nuclear weapons or technology, and not lead by the stupidity that can only be found in propaganda-brainwashed Soviet Union.

Nanos
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Post by Nanos »

In the UK we have rather a large collection of nuclear accidents, with few people ending up in any kind of trouble at all, as everyone does their best to hide the evidence and pass the buck.

You make a nuclear power plant sound like it never needs maintence :-)

I look forward to the new generation of plants being built in the UK, hopefully better design and build than the old ones we have.

Though I have to say, I am concerned seeing how we are making rather a mess of a lot of modern designs, due in part to the dying off of old engineers and wannabe university educated ones coming along who think they know it all.

Which is why my new home will be underground, and with button up ability just in case some moron really does press the wrong button.

I can give you an example, sometimes I visit customers with 30 year old technology, they still want fixed, it does the job, but few people know how to fix it. Why don't they simply upgrade.. well, I visit customers with brand new equipment, well, to be frank, its always playing up, with beta software, or poor design, and poor build quality.

I get a constant stream of customers who come to me after they tried the PHD educated folk who don't have a clue which end to hold a spanner.

Thats not to say there are smart people out there with their heads screwed on, but are all of those working on designing every component..

Every few decades we end up reinventing the wheel because we forgot what we learn't the first time around, and never seem to learn from our past mistakes very well, lets hope we get it right this time, and not just assume we are all that.

Zixinus
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Post by Zixinus »

What you have failed to note about the three incidents I selected (or perhaps knew but avoided acknowledging) is that all three involved major incompetence, and all three were covered up. And that's the problem.
What you fail, and fail completely, is that all three accidents were minor.

There were not covered up, because they didn't had to be covered up. They were just minor accidents due to human error.
The people who have the money to put into building a nuclear power plant are not competent to judge the competence of the people they hire to design, build, and run it, nor are they competent to judge the seriousness of the danger of a particular problem; and they have a strong financial motive for hiding any problem. They are also the people in charge. And again, that's the problem.
You cannot hide that there is radioactive leakage in a nuclear power plant. If there is significant excess radioactivity beyond normal levels, then there is a very good chance that someone screwed up big time. You need nothing but a proper GM tube of your favourite kind
In the UK we have rather a large collection of nuclear accidents, with few people ending up in any kind of trouble at all, as everyone does their best to hide the evidence and pass the buck.
Or perhaps most of these accidents were merely minor, and were handled quickly and appropriately, with no need for media outcry.
You make a nuclear power plant sound like it never needs maintence Smile
I never said such a thing. What I said, or tried to say anyway, is that a nuclear reactor is a closed system that requires a very different mindset and engineering experience then what you need for an aircraft. You can shut down a reactor in-operation if something is odd, you can't shut down a jet engine in-operation if something odd shows up.
Which is why my new home will be underground, and with button up ability just in case some moron really does press the wrong button.
Not gonna save you, not one bit. You still need air, and the radioactive ash will quickly find its way trough the water.

Also, check for any excess radiation from radon that you free up while moving the ground around.

Another thing: I am confident that nuclear power plants are not built in such a way that accidentally pressing the wrong button will cause an explosion and catastrophe.
I can give you an example, sometimes I visit customers with 30 year old technology, they still want fixed, it does the job, but few people know how to fix it. Why don't they simply upgrade.. well, I visit customers with brand new equipment, well, to be frank, its always playing up, with beta software, or poor design, and poor build quality.

I get a constant stream of customers who come to me after they tried the PHD educated folk who don't have a clue which end to hold a spanner.
And your job is what? Computer programmer?


Safety is calculated with human error in mind, and every modern system has a series of measures that take over if someone screws up or the reactor is handled inappropriately.

I recommend this site for close study:
http://www.freedomforfission.org.uk/index.html

EDIT:
A quote from the site:
Argument: One meltdown can mean a massive ecological and humanitarian disaster.

Answer:
That is fearmongering and a cliche. A meltdown is a serious reactor malfunction, but not necessarily a public safety risk. It is, as the name implies, the melting of the fuel forming a large puddle of subcritical goop on the floor of the reactor housing. If this happens, the reactor is a write-off and big men from the NRC will come round to break a few kneecaps. But to threaten public safety, significant quantities of radioactive material would need to be released. TMI was a complete non-threat to public safety despite the melting of the fuel due to the final stage in the defense-in-depth principle: containment.
Sizewell B
Figure 1- the gleaming white containment structure of Sizewell B is sufficient to keep the hazardous contents inside seperate from the outside through all manner of accidents.

All reactors, with the exception of some old Soviet designs such as the RBMK, are encased in large steel-reinforced concrete containment structures, such as the one shown in figure 1. These are the most hardened structures in all of civil engineering, designed to contain both melted fuel on the inside as it did at TMI, and protect against impacts from fully loaded airliners. They are built around reactors for exactly the purpose of being a failsafe line of defense in the event of a worst case scenario accident such as a prompt criticality. There would have been no damage to the environment from Chernobyl had it been built with a containment structure around it, to contain the radionuclides the fire was trying to disperse.

The containment structure is the critical asset to safety, regardless of what goes on inside, regardless of whatever failures happen in the engineered components of the reactor safety systems, the containment structure will be there to protect the outside. Engineering works on the principle of simplicity being the key to reliability and there is nothing simpler than a six foot thick slab of concrete. It is this beyond all else, which reduces the probability of a repeat of Chernobyl to virtually zero.

Nanos
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Post by Nanos »

Button up, either filter incoming air, or produce your own, and its not rocket science to keep a store of water in tanks to avoid having to use contaminated stuff.

My job is Mr Fixit, I fix PC's, cars, TV's, plumbing, wiring, you name it, I can usually have a go at fixing simple stuff, mind you, after several decades fixing certain things like computers, one gets fairly good at it.

But I come from a family of experts who rather taught me just how things should be done, and how to reconise someone whose a moron at things, and I see a lot of those in the world today.

There are numerious examples of nuclear mistakes (as in any industry..) which fill miles of filing cabinets, thats not so much an issue in itself, its the buck passing and covering up of these events that concerns me most.

I mean, do you really want to hear about waste dumped under an airport and then when someone accidently discovers it digging a tunnel, that tunnel is suddenly aborted and a new route chosen, the people given hush money to keep quiet and the whole thing swept under the carpet..

I've seen entire systems taken down by the simplist of things, thats why nuclear is problem for joe public, because they are aware how easy it is for humans to make mistakes, and big nuclear mistakes can be on a larger scale than others.

If we just, rather than say 'oh we never make mistakes', say 'oh yeah, something broke last week and leaked a little radioactive stuff, but we cleared it up' people would get bored and see it as a tradional industry with mistakes, rather than jumping up and down when we constantly hide things.

Do I really have to waste my time picking out several hundred tad more serious nuclear incidents for you to sit up and take that cotton wool out of your ears ?

Schneibster
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Post by Schneibster »

Zix, I'm not talking about doomsday scenarios. I'm talking about transparency, and its lack, and what that means to most people. They're never going to go for it without total transparency. Those three examples I pointed to prove that transparency is lacking, if anyone needed anything of the kind after watching the fan dance over in Japan this past week. Operating in that fashion is totally unacceptable to most people, and they'll continue to rant against it until there is true transparency. It doesn't matter how safe it is, it doesn't matter how good the containment is, it doesn't matter how good the safety systems are, it doesn't matter how well it's designed, it doesn't matter how well trained the operators are, it doesn't matter what school the nuclear engineers who designed it went to or how good their grades were. People are scared of this stuff, and denying it is ridiculous. The ONLY way to fix it is to be transparent, and stay that way until the current generation has died out and most people have seen nuclear power operate all their lives without a problem.

The point is not how big the accident was. The point is, there was a cover-up. Cover-ups are unacceptable, period. Until you admit it, there is no further point in talking about it.

tonybarry
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Post by tonybarry »

Hello nanos,
I work in a large public hospital in Sydney, Australia. We routinely use fluoroscopy and isotopes for medical purposes. If there were to be any little leaks as you describe:-
If we just, rather than say 'oh we never make mistakes', say 'oh yeah, something broke last week and leaked a little radioactive stuff, but we cleared it up' people would get bored and see it as a tradional industry with mistakes, rather than jumping up and down when we constantly hide things.
... the fit would hit the shan at a thousand miles an hour. The public's view of radiation is not that of the seasoned scientist who has learned to be complacent. The public's view is bordering on paranoia, and personally I lean a bit that way myself. While there may be oodles of natural, background radiation, and oodles of megaBecquerels used in radiation therapy, it's viewed as a risk.
You may not share the public view on radiation and its harmful effects at low doses. But you do need to know it exists, and (as Schneibster says) is unlikely to go away anytime soon.
Regards,
Tony Barry

Zixinus
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Post by Zixinus »

Button up, either filter incoming air, or produce your own, and its not rocket science to keep a store of water in tanks to avoid having to use contaminated stuff.
How long will the air filters work? How much water can you store?

The fact alone that you make a bunker in case of a nuclear fallout is something that does not assure me, in many things.
But I come from a family of experts who rather taught me just how things should be done, and how to reconise someone whose a moron at things, and I see a lot of those in the world today.
So you're a self-appointed expert at everything? Or are you saying that people are stupid? In the first case, take a reality check; in the second case, tell me something new.
There are numerious examples of nuclear mistakes (as in any industry..) which fill miles of filing cabinets, thats not so much an issue in itself, its the buck passing and covering up of these events that concerns me most.
Really? I don't know much about this. All three accidents you mentioned I could easily look up.

And what kind of "cover up" are we talking about? Were the spilled materials and/or broken equipment cleaned up and repaired or were people were just given money to forget that there is a problem?

If its the first case, then there is nothing interesting for the public to see, if the second, how are they going to hide high-level radiation?

I read that all three accidents were handled appropriately, and was uninteresting enough for the mass media to find something more interesting, like Paris Hilton. Oh, wait, is THAT the cover-up you are talking about?

Oh, and if there was a "cover-up" how do YOU know about it? What sort of public documentation would mention "cover-up"?
If we just, rather than say 'oh we never make mistakes', say 'oh yeah, something broke last week and leaked a little radioactive stuff, but we cleared it up' people would get bored and see it as a tradional industry with mistakes, rather than jumping up and down when we constantly hide things.
The problem with this idea, is that if a coal power plant blows up with enough sound that you can hear it from 20 kilometres away, and shatters glass enough for few people to get killed, it gets into the news for a few seconds and then switch to something more interesting, like Paris Hilton.

If a nuclear power plant has a outer steam overpressure, or even a contained meltdown (ie, the internationally mandatory steel-reinforced concrete dome contained everything, as it should), or even a burned out LED, people will think it's the end of the world and the mass media will have its orgy of doom-saying.

Other industries don't have entire lobbies of scaremongering politician-wannabes that want to shut down the entire industry as a whole, at the event of the smallest accident so they could get an easy job at [insert high political position of your government] with a humongous payroll and with no more work then mere paper-pushing and being a yes-man. Similar things have happened before, and these people do not, and will not care what damage they do.
I mean, do you really want to hear about waste dumped under an airport and then when someone accidently discovers it digging a tunnel, that tunnel is suddenly aborted and a new route chosen, the people given hush money to keep quiet and the whole thing swept under the carpet..
And how do I know that this is not something you made up? Can you mention the name of the incident, the airport, the people responsible?
I've seen entire systems taken down by the simplist of things, thats why nuclear is problem for joe public, because they are aware how easy it is for humans to make mistakes, and big nuclear mistakes can be on a larger scale than others.
You make it sound as if anything nuclear is built on sticks and designed by a retarded child. While this may be true for some stuff the Soviet Union made, this is not the case of the modern world and technology, for about 30-40 years.
Do I really have to waste my time picking out several hundred tad more serious nuclear incidents for you to sit up and take that cotton wool out of your ears ?
You sound like a few conspiracy theorists I met, always calling me blind or deaf when I don't accept that man in fact did not land on the moon or that 9/11 was an inside job with controlled demolitions.

I can tell them that the Russians followed the Apollo rockets or that 9/11 could not have been an inside job with controlled demolitions because then why the heck would you need to crash a plane into it, but such arguments are ignored.

I don't deny that there are mishaps and accidents, some of them avoidable with more competent operators. But we are human, we screw up from time to time, even the best. What matters is that everything is cleaned up after a mishap or accident. Does this not happen? Do you have proof that this does not happen?

And what the frick is your argument anyway? That we should try to pursue fusion no matter what? Well, lets for a second, assume that no fusion concept will work or not be practical. So what now? We swallow the pill, and take fission or try to go for zero-point energy?
t doesn't matter how safe it is, it doesn't matter how good the containment is, it doesn't matter how good the safety systems are, it doesn't matter how well it's designed, it doesn't matter how well trained the operators are, it doesn't matter what school the nuclear engineers who designed it went to or how good their grades were. People are scared of this stuff, and denying it is ridiculous.
So, the technology, the people that work with this all, all the safety measures and features, the people that designed it are all worthless because its...scary?
The ONLY way to fix it is to be transparent, and stay that way until the current generation has died out and most people have seen nuclear power operate all their lives without a problem.
A nuclear power plant is a complex thing, and any engineer knows that complex things always have a bolt lose or a wheel that needs to be oiled. There is always something to tighten or fix, but most of these stuff is nothing serious. If it was a coal power plant, you'd never hear any of them, because they are uninteresting for the public.

For this reason, it is impossible to always operate a nuclear power plant without a problem. This is like asking Windows not to freeze at least once in 5 years.

However, that's when good engineering and good operation comes in: III generation and IV generation reactors are designed so that if something screws up, an army of safety measures of various kinds kick in and make a would-be-catastrophe into a localized accident. Metaphorically, some heads will roll for whoever frick up, money will be spent on repairs and upgrading the system to prevent the causing problem from ever happening again.
The point is not how big the accident was. The point is, there was a cover-up. Cover-ups are unacceptable, period. Until you admit it, there is no further point in talking about it.
WHAT frick COVER-UP ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? WHAT? ALL ACCIDENTS YOU MENTIONED I COULD EASILY LOOK UP ON frick GOOGLE, HECK ALL OF THEM ARE MENTIONED IN frick WIKIPEDIA! IF THERE WAS A COVER-UP, THEY DID ONE SHITTY JOB AT IT IF A frick FOREIGNER STUDENT CAN LOOK IT UP FROM HIS HOME.

Schneibster
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Post by Schneibster »

Zixinus wrote:
Schneibster wrote:t doesn't matter how safe it is, it doesn't matter how good the containment is, it doesn't matter how good the safety systems are, it doesn't matter how well it's designed, it doesn't matter how well trained the operators are, it doesn't matter what school the nuclear engineers who designed it went to or how good their grades were. People are scared of this stuff, and denying it is ridiculous.
So, the technology, the people that work with this all, all the safety measures and features, the people that designed it are all worthless because its...scary?
Yep. Welcome to politics. Thanks for playing.
Zixinus wrote:
Schneibster wrote:The ONLY way to fix it is to be transparent, and stay that way until the current generation has died out and most people have seen nuclear power operate all their lives without a problem.
A nuclear power plant is a complex thing, and any engineer knows that complex things always have a bolt lose or a wheel that needs to be oiled. There is always something to tighten or fix, but most of these stuff is nothing serious. If it was a coal power plant, you'd never hear any of them, because they are uninteresting for the public.

For this reason, it is impossible to always operate a nuclear power plant without a problem. This is like asking Windows not to freeze at least once in 5 years.
That's not what I said. What I said is, when something happens, it needs to be dealt with transparently, and there are numerous instances in which it was not. That needs to change.

Wheels that need to be oiled, bolts that need to be tightened, don't generally result in the release of something that people can't see or feel but that can kill them. What you're asking people to do is trust an industry that has screwed up over and over again on earning that trust, with something that can kill them unpleasantly that they can't sense. Somehow I think it's not going to happen that way.
Zixinus wrote:However, that's when good engineering and good operation comes in: III generation and IV generation reactors are designed so that if something screws up, an army of safety measures of various kinds kick in and make a would-be-catastrophe into a localized accident. Metaphorically, some heads will roll for whoever frick up, money will be spent on repairs and upgrading the system to prevent the causing problem from ever happening again.
I have no doubt of it. But that's not the point, is it? The point is, for nuclear power to work well politically, people in general have to trust that the people running it know what they're doing, and will tell them if something goes bad wrong. They don't. And until they do, it ain't gonna happen.
Zixinus wrote:
Schneibster wrote:The point is not how big the accident was. The point is, there was a cover-up. Cover-ups are unacceptable, period. Until you admit it, there is no further point in talking about it.
WHAT frick COVER-UP ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? WHAT? ALL ACCIDENTS YOU MENTIONED I COULD EASILY LOOK UP ON frick GOOGLE, HECK ALL OF THEM ARE MENTIONED IN frick WIKIPEDIA! IF THERE WAS A COVER-UP, THEY DID ONE SHITTY JOB AT IT IF A frick FOREIGNER STUDENT CAN LOOK IT UP FROM HIS HOME.
So, because they got caught, there wasn't any cover-up? The cover-ups are documented in the very sources you google up. Fair or not, that makes people ask, "So, how many things got successfully covered up?" Because that's how people think. Again, the point is a political one.

Until that gets fixed, there ain't gonna be no fission reactors in the US, and you quite likely would have a problem building a fusion reactor because most people don't know the difference and will think it's just as dangerous.

As it happens, I think this is a shame. I think everything you say about the actual safety of fission is correct; but again, that's not the problem. You're basically asking people not to be people.

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