Has Commercial Nuclear Power been "Regulated" Out of Existence in the U.S.?

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

While it is never acknowledged by the political Left, the American Commercial Nuclear Power industry has the best safety record of any industry in all of human history. Since its inception in the early 1950's there has not been a single radiation-related fatality - or even sickness - in the entire industry. The safety precautions that are mandated and followed in nuclear power stations are SO thorough and SO all-encompassing that the cancer rate for nuclear power employees is lower than for the general population (same for the Nuclear Navy).

You might ask, "What about THREE MILE ISLAND???" Well, what about it? Not a single injury or fatality, not even a mild case of radiation sickness. Nothing. Just a lot of hysteria, largely fueled by the unfortunate coincidence of this relatively insignificant accident with the film, "The China Syndrome."

There is no doubt that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission takes great pride in this accomplishment, and in a sense it should. Many of the precautions that maintain this incredible safety record come directly from that august body.

But the NRC has, in its neurotic enthusiasm, created a situation where a new nuclear power plant is, for all practical purposes, infinitely expensive. Permitting alone can take ten years. Manufacturing and construction are so restrictively managed that they are at least 2-3 times more costly than would be building exactly the same facilities for some other normally-regulated purpose.

I worked in Purchasing for a nuclear power company for a few years, and imagine the cost impact of buying a normal commercial item - say a large industrial valve or pump - for which the warranty will not start for three or four years, and even that date is highly speculative, given the regulatory environment. We were paying 3-5 times the Catalog Price of standard commercial equipment, mainly so that the manufacturer could cover the expected warranty risk.

But this regulatory micro-management is not necessary. Even though the current designs are "new," they are all based on proven designs, and the improvements simply make them safer than the existing plants that have been in service - some of them - for more than thirty years. The latest major innovations render "meltdown" impossible, as the cooling water continues to flow even when the reactor is dormant (but still hot).

Having virtually given up on building a safe, proven nuclear power plant of conventional size, the industry pins its hopes on Small Modular Reactors ("SMR's") which can be pre-manufactured and delivered to a site, and combined with other similar reactors to meet the needs of that utility. Good luck with that.

But it represents the Industry just throwing up its hands and acknowledging that the regulatory framework makes building a nuclear power plant impossible, even though we have the technology to do it in an economically feasible manner - even with natural gas breathing down its figurative neck. The actual cost of nuclear power is microscopic; you are simply controlling a natural phenomenon and siphoning off the heat that it generates.

Mark it well: we have foolishly and neurotically regulated this industry out of existence at a time when "we" claim to need sources of energy that do not generate greenhouse gases.

We have met the enemy and...well, you know the rest.

The biggest problem with nuclear is the waste. You can not go near it for thousands of years. We are leaving a trap for our prodigy. Will they have any idea not to enter an area so full of nuclear waste? We have no idea.

The waste is usually manageable, and what is created per unit power generated is miniscule compared to other waste streams for other power sources. (remember combustion products from fossil fuel power generation is a waste stream).

The key is proper labelling, design of containment, and location of containment. If we get to a point where the labels aren't maintained or understood we are probably looking at a planet of the apes level collapse of civilization anyway.

Look back a couple thousand years what language was spoken here? What language was spoken in Italy? I don't seem to remember a planet of the apes style collapse in my history books.
Perhaps you would be so kind as to point out my lack of education on that matter?
How many cities have been discovered over the last hundred years that were unknown to us? Care to guess that it was more then one? If we can forget the location of even one city than how would it be such a stretch of the imagination to forget the location of even one depository?

They didn't have the level of technological ability we have, both with regards to the storage of, and dissemination of, information. Also you are talking about cities, not intentionally designed isolation facilities for nuclear waste. Waste Depositories would be placed in the middle of nowhere, probably buried deep inside a mountain, then re-enforced with tons of concrete and steel. Access would be limited, and multiple layers of warnings and control methods would be used for any access.

In a few thousand years one would hope anyone "stumbling" into something like this would still have the cognitive ability to recognize warning signs and giant radiation symbols all over the place if they decided to dig into one of these repositories.

So did recognize any of the languages spoken two thousand years ago at first sight? A lot of waste is being stored in an old salt mine. Remember the Washington state spill a few years back. If you really want to learn do a quick search of nuclear waste accidents.

If in 1000 years they are too dumb to ignore the visual warnings, and the fact they have to dig/cut/burn through several containment structures and vessels, i say fuck em.

That's assuming some one never makes a mistake or we don't have a leak into the ground water.

If you create impossible conditions for something you make it impossible. The concept is risk mitigation, not risk elimination.

The idea is to layer the defenses so just one or two mistakes or incidents don't lead to total failure.

If you look at most disasters, one bad thing isn't usually enough, it requires a sequence of bad events for the worst to happen.

Sometimes it isn't just layered defenses.
Love canal comes to mind.
The release of chemical gases in India.
Chernobyl, three mile island. Fukushima.
Numerous leaks of radioactive waste.
We have been lucky. Can we hope that we can continue with luck?
Even if it is not completely man made, nature has shown us that we are not masters of this world no matter what we think.

TMI doesn't belong with the other two, hell even Fukishima doesn't belong with chernobyl.

In all the cases, multiple mistakes had to be made before anything really bad happened.

If you are that afraid of everything I suggest you find some place in the woods and build a concrete cabin with 4 ft thick walls and hide until you die of old age.

The funny thing is you can argue until you are blue in the face but they were all problems at nuclear facilities or man made problems as in love canal.
Lol. Actually I am not afraid of much at all. I understand that you want to believe that you understand things but I think you are going to find out that there are others in the world that will put a halt to nuclear energy.

1 catastrophic accident caused by a shitty design, shitty management, and shitty culture. 1 bad accident caused by a 40 ft tall wall of water and incompetence, and one overblown accident caused by poor operational awareness.

I'll put my engineering degree up against whatever basketweaving education you have any day of the week.

And yet all three of those were nuclear accidents. Unless you want to try and call them home accidents.
So how do you think that the next accident will go? Will we be lucky or unlucky?
Glad to see you are so upset. Do things always upset you when everyone doesn't bow down and fall in line with your way of thinking?

The thing with accidents is you learn from each one. It's why air travel becomes safer every year.

And to me Chernobyl wasn't an accident, it was willful negligence from design to operation.

Ok so what did we learn from Fukushima? Not to build nuclear reactors where they come in contact with nature. There are how many areas that could be hit by nature?

Place your emergency generators somewhere where they can't be flooded out. Place the fuel for them likewise. Increase your emergency fuel supply.

We also learned that a containment structure will keep most of the core material in place.

Place them where they can't be flooded out. On top of a mountain?
Yes indeed most of the core material. Got to love the most part of that. In other words loss of some is acceptable.

Or build a better sea-wall, another plant in Japan had a bigger one and came out just fine.

The containment worked for the most part, as opposed to no containment at Chernobyl. The only hotspot really remaining at Fukushima is the plant itself, similar to TMI, but larger in scope.

So we just need to fiqure out how to build something that nature can't tear down. Right... Again for the most part. So of course after two or three thousand years both will be safe.
We don't need to worry. We just need to build things that nature or man can't get into or destroy. Then if we don't we can be very happy and celebrate that only a potion of the core material is gone. Because only a portion is now considered acceptable. Then all we have to do is again try to build something that can withstand nature and humans for two or three thousand years.

Do you remember what was said about doing the same thing over and over again?

So The Nuclear Industry is the only one you want to apply a Zero Risk principle towards, while other energy generation methods are allowed a lesser standard?

No I would love it if everything man did was zero risk. But no matter what he does there will never be zero risk. We have had fire for centuries yet it is not zero risk.
The only thing is if you blow up and completely level a natural gas electrical generation plant there is little to no risk of the ground being uninhabitable for generations. There is no risk of wind blowing hazardous radiation to other areas.

Man is an inherently risk taking animal. If he were not he would never have done more the eat, sleep and shit. Every time we get on a plane, car or even walk across the street we take risks. We risked many times going into space or going to the moon. We risk many lives every time a submarine leaves port. But as I pointed out if an aircraft fails only those immediately affected are lost. And yes that takes into account anyone hit by it.
If a nuclear reactor fails how many are affected? What would be an acceptable loss? For how many years are we going to hope that the area affected won't be used, traveled or visited?

It depends on the level of failure. Based on US experience with our one accident, the affected area is the reactor itself. For Fukushima the long term impact is the reactor complex itself. Only Chernobyl has had quantifiable long term impacts over a wide area, and even those appear to be mitigating faster than we expected.

I guess you are unfamiliar with the radioactive water leaking from Fukushima.

 

[Maxdeath]

While it is never acknowledged by the political Left, the American Commercial Nuclear Power industry has the best safety record of any industry in all of human history. Since its inception in the early 1950's there has not been a single radiation-related fatality - or even sickness - in the entire industry. The safety precautions that are mandated and followed in nuclear power stations are SO thorough and SO all-encompassing that the cancer rate for nuclear power employees is lower than for the general population (same for the Nuclear Navy).

You might ask, "What about THREE MILE ISLAND???" Well, what about it? Not a single injury or fatality, not even a mild case of radiation sickness. Nothing. Just a lot of hysteria, largely fueled by the unfortunate coincidence of this relatively insignificant accident with the film, "The China Syndrome."

There is no doubt that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission takes great pride in this accomplishment, and in a sense it should. Many of the precautions that maintain this incredible safety record come directly from that august body.

But the NRC has, in its neurotic enthusiasm, created a situation where a new nuclear power plant is, for all practical purposes, infinitely expensive. Permitting alone can take ten years. Manufacturing and construction are so restrictively managed that they are at least 2-3 times more costly than would be building exactly the same facilities for some other normally-regulated purpose.

I worked in Purchasing for a nuclear power company for a few years, and imagine the cost impact of buying a normal commercial item - say a large industrial valve or pump - for which the warranty will not start for three or four years, and even that date is highly speculative, given the regulatory environment. We were paying 3-5 times the Catalog Price of standard commercial equipment, mainly so that the manufacturer could cover the expected warranty risk.

But this regulatory micro-management is not necessary. Even though the current designs are "new," they are all based on proven designs, and the improvements simply make them safer than the existing plants that have been in service - some of them - for more than thirty years. The latest major innovations render "meltdown" impossible, as the cooling water continues to flow even when the reactor is dormant (but still hot).

Having virtually given up on building a safe, proven nuclear power plant of conventional size, the industry pins its hopes on Small Modular Reactors ("SMR's") which can be pre-manufactured and delivered to a site, and combined with other similar reactors to meet the needs of that utility. Good luck with that.

But it represents the Industry just throwing up its hands and acknowledging that the regulatory framework makes building a nuclear power plant impossible, even though we have the technology to do it in an economically feasible manner - even with natural gas breathing down its figurative neck. The actual cost of nuclear power is microscopic; you are simply controlling a natural phenomenon and siphoning off the heat that it generates.

Mark it well: we have foolishly and neurotically regulated this industry out of existence at a time when "we" claim to need sources of energy that do not generate greenhouse gases.

We have met the enemy and...well, you know the rest.

The biggest problem with nuclear is the waste. You can not go near it for thousands of years. We are leaving a trap for our prodigy. Will they have any idea not to enter an area so full of nuclear waste? We have no idea.

The waste is usually manageable, and what is created per unit power generated is miniscule compared to other waste streams for other power sources. (remember combustion products from fossil fuel power generation is a waste stream).

The key is proper labelling, design of containment, and location of containment. If we get to a point where the labels aren't maintained or understood we are probably looking at a planet of the apes level collapse of civilization anyway.

Look back a couple thousand years what language was spoken here? What language was spoken in Italy? I don't seem to remember a planet of the apes style collapse in my history books.
Perhaps you would be so kind as to point out my lack of education on that matter?
How many cities have been discovered over the last hundred years that were unknown to us? Care to guess that it was more then one? If we can forget the location of even one city than how would it be such a stretch of the imagination to forget the location of even one depository?

They didn't have the level of technological ability we have, both with regards to the storage of, and dissemination of, information. Also you are talking about cities, not intentionally designed isolation facilities for nuclear waste. Waste Depositories would be placed in the middle of nowhere, probably buried deep inside a mountain, then re-enforced with tons of concrete and steel. Access would be limited, and multiple layers of warnings and control methods would be used for any access.

In a few thousand years one would hope anyone "stumbling" into something like this would still have the cognitive ability to recognize warning signs and giant radiation symbols all over the place if they decided to dig into one of these repositories.

So did recognize any of the languages spoken two thousand years ago at first sight? A lot of waste is being stored in an old salt mine. Remember the Washington state spill a few years back. If you really want to learn do a quick search of nuclear waste accidents.

If in 1000 years they are too dumb to ignore the visual warnings, and the fact they have to dig/cut/burn through several containment structures and vessels, i say fuck em.

That's assuming some one never makes a mistake or we don't have a leak into the ground water.

If you create impossible conditions for something you make it impossible. The concept is risk mitigation, not risk elimination.

The idea is to layer the defenses so just one or two mistakes or incidents don't lead to total failure.

If you look at most disasters, one bad thing isn't usually enough, it requires a sequence of bad events for the worst to happen.

Sometimes it isn't just layered defenses.
Love canal comes to mind.
The release of chemical gases in India.
Chernobyl, three mile island. Fukushima.
Numerous leaks of radioactive waste.
We have been lucky. Can we hope that we can continue with luck?
Even if it is not completely man made, nature has shown us that we are not masters of this world no matter what we think.

TMI doesn't belong with the other two, hell even Fukishima doesn't belong with chernobyl.

In all the cases, multiple mistakes had to be made before anything really bad happened.

If you are that afraid of everything I suggest you find some place in the woods and build a concrete cabin with 4 ft thick walls and hide until you die of old age.

The funny thing is you can argue until you are blue in the face but they were all problems at nuclear facilities or man made problems as in love canal.
Lol. Actually I am not afraid of much at all. I understand that you want to believe that you understand things but I think you are going to find out that there are others in the world that will put a halt to nuclear energy.

1 catastrophic accident caused by a shitty design, shitty management, and shitty culture. 1 bad accident caused by a 40 ft tall wall of water and incompetence, and one overblown accident caused by poor operational awareness.

I'll put my engineering degree up against whatever basketweaving education you have any day of the week.

And yet all three of those were nuclear accidents. Unless you want to try and call them home accidents.
So how do you think that the next accident will go? Will we be lucky or unlucky?
Glad to see you are so upset. Do things always upset you when everyone doesn't bow down and fall in line with your way of thinking?

The thing with accidents is you learn from each one. It's why air travel becomes safer every year.

And to me Chernobyl wasn't an accident, it was willful negligence from design to operation.

Ok so what did we learn from Fukushima? Not to build nuclear reactors where they come in contact with nature. There are how many areas that could be hit by nature?

Place your emergency generators somewhere where they can't be flooded out. Place the fuel for them likewise. Increase your emergency fuel supply.

We also learned that a containment structure will keep most of the core material in place.

Place them where they can't be flooded out. On top of a mountain?
Yes indeed most of the core material. Got to love the most part of that. In other words loss of some is acceptable.

Or build a better sea-wall, another plant in Japan had a bigger one and came out just fine.

The containment worked for the most part, as opposed to no containment at Chernobyl. The only hotspot really remaining at Fukushima is the plant itself, similar to TMI, but larger in scope.

So we just need to fiqure out how to build something that nature can't tear down. Right... Again for the most part. So of course after two or three thousand years both will be safe.
We don't need to worry. We just need to build things that nature or man can't get into or destroy. Then if we don't we can be very happy and celebrate that only a potion of the core material is gone. Because only a portion is now considered acceptable. Then all we have to do is again try to build something that can withstand nature and humans for two or three thousand years.

Do you remember what was said about doing the same thing over and over again?

So The Nuclear Industry is the only one you want to apply a Zero Risk principle towards, while other energy generation methods are allowed a lesser standard?

No I would love it if everything man did was zero risk. But no matter what he does there will never be zero risk. We have had fire for centuries yet it is not zero risk.
The only thing is if you blow up and completely level a natural gas electrical generation plant there is little to no risk of the ground being uninhabitable for generations. There is no risk of wind blowing hazardous radiation to other areas.

Man is an inherently risk taking animal. If he were not he would never have done more the eat, sleep and shit. Every time we get on a plane, car or even walk across the street we take risks. We risked many times going into space or going to the moon. We risk many lives every time a submarine leaves port. But as I pointed out if an aircraft fails only those immediately affected are lost. And yes that takes into account anyone hit by it.
If a nuclear reactor fails how many are affected? What would be an acceptable loss? For how many years are we going to hope that the area affected won't be used, traveled or visited?

It depends on the level of failure. Based on US experience with our one accident, the affected area is the reactor itself. For Fukushima the long term impact is the reactor complex itself. Only Chernobyl has had quantifiable long term impacts over a wide area, and even those appear to be mitigating faster than we expected.

So we are always going to have success. There will never be a natural or man made disaster? No foreign or domestic terrorism successful cause of catastrophic failure?
I have no doubt that the Titanic, Apollo 13 and others felt the same way. No chance that anything could go wrong. I have no doubt that the most of the people that boarded and flew the planes that hit the World Trade Center felt that there was nothing that could go wrong.

The simple matter is things do go wrong. Hiding from that fact or trying to gloss over it does not make it go away.

 

[martybegan]

While it is never acknowledged by the political Left, the American Commercial Nuclear Power industry has the best safety record of any industry in all of human history. Since its inception in the early 1950's there has not been a single radiation-related fatality - or even sickness - in the entire industry. The safety precautions that are mandated and followed in nuclear power stations are SO thorough and SO all-encompassing that the cancer rate for nuclear power employees is lower than for the general population (same for the Nuclear Navy).

You might ask, "What about THREE MILE ISLAND???" Well, what about it? Not a single injury or fatality, not even a mild case of radiation sickness. Nothing. Just a lot of hysteria, largely fueled by the unfortunate coincidence of this relatively insignificant accident with the film, "The China Syndrome."

There is no doubt that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission takes great pride in this accomplishment, and in a sense it should. Many of the precautions that maintain this incredible safety record come directly from that august body.

But the NRC has, in its neurotic enthusiasm, created a situation where a new nuclear power plant is, for all practical purposes, infinitely expensive. Permitting alone can take ten years. Manufacturing and construction are so restrictively managed that they are at least 2-3 times more costly than would be building exactly the same facilities for some other normally-regulated purpose.

I worked in Purchasing for a nuclear power company for a few years, and imagine the cost impact of buying a normal commercial item - say a large industrial valve or pump - for which the warranty will not start for three or four years, and even that date is highly speculative, given the regulatory environment. We were paying 3-5 times the Catalog Price of standard commercial equipment, mainly so that the manufacturer could cover the expected warranty risk.

But this regulatory micro-management is not necessary. Even though the current designs are "new," they are all based on proven designs, and the improvements simply make them safer than the existing plants that have been in service - some of them - for more than thirty years. The latest major innovations render "meltdown" impossible, as the cooling water continues to flow even when the reactor is dormant (but still hot).

Having virtually given up on building a safe, proven nuclear power plant of conventional size, the industry pins its hopes on Small Modular Reactors ("SMR's") which can be pre-manufactured and delivered to a site, and combined with other similar reactors to meet the needs of that utility. Good luck with that.

But it represents the Industry just throwing up its hands and acknowledging that the regulatory framework makes building a nuclear power plant impossible, even though we have the technology to do it in an economically feasible manner - even with natural gas breathing down its figurative neck. The actual cost of nuclear power is microscopic; you are simply controlling a natural phenomenon and siphoning off the heat that it generates.

Mark it well: we have foolishly and neurotically regulated this industry out of existence at a time when "we" claim to need sources of energy that do not generate greenhouse gases.

We have met the enemy and...well, you know the rest.

The biggest problem with nuclear is the waste. You can not go near it for thousands of years. We are leaving a trap for our prodigy. Will they have any idea not to enter an area so full of nuclear waste? We have no idea.

The waste is usually manageable, and what is created per unit power generated is miniscule compared to other waste streams for other power sources. (remember combustion products from fossil fuel power generation is a waste stream).

The key is proper labelling, design of containment, and location of containment. If we get to a point where the labels aren't maintained or understood we are probably looking at a planet of the apes level collapse of civilization anyway.

Look back a couple thousand years what language was spoken here? What language was spoken in Italy? I don't seem to remember a planet of the apes style collapse in my history books.
Perhaps you would be so kind as to point out my lack of education on that matter?
How many cities have been discovered over the last hundred years that were unknown to us? Care to guess that it was more then one? If we can forget the location of even one city than how would it be such a stretch of the imagination to forget the location of even one depository?

They didn't have the level of technological ability we have, both with regards to the storage of, and dissemination of, information. Also you are talking about cities, not intentionally designed isolation facilities for nuclear waste. Waste Depositories would be placed in the middle of nowhere, probably buried deep inside a mountain, then re-enforced with tons of concrete and steel. Access would be limited, and multiple layers of warnings and control methods would be used for any access.

In a few thousand years one would hope anyone "stumbling" into something like this would still have the cognitive ability to recognize warning signs and giant radiation symbols all over the place if they decided to dig into one of these repositories.

So did recognize any of the languages spoken two thousand years ago at first sight? A lot of waste is being stored in an old salt mine. Remember the Washington state spill a few years back. If you really want to learn do a quick search of nuclear waste accidents.

If in 1000 years they are too dumb to ignore the visual warnings, and the fact they have to dig/cut/burn through several containment structures and vessels, i say fuck em.

That's assuming some one never makes a mistake or we don't have a leak into the ground water.

If you create impossible conditions for something you make it impossible. The concept is risk mitigation, not risk elimination.

The idea is to layer the defenses so just one or two mistakes or incidents don't lead to total failure.

If you look at most disasters, one bad thing isn't usually enough, it requires a sequence of bad events for the worst to happen.

Sometimes it isn't just layered defenses.
Love canal comes to mind.
The release of chemical gases in India.
Chernobyl, three mile island. Fukushima.
Numerous leaks of radioactive waste.
We have been lucky. Can we hope that we can continue with luck?
Even if it is not completely man made, nature has shown us that we are not masters of this world no matter what we think.

TMI doesn't belong with the other two, hell even Fukishima doesn't belong with chernobyl.

In all the cases, multiple mistakes had to be made before anything really bad happened.

If you are that afraid of everything I suggest you find some place in the woods and build a concrete cabin with 4 ft thick walls and hide until you die of old age.

The funny thing is you can argue until you are blue in the face but they were all problems at nuclear facilities or man made problems as in love canal.
Lol. Actually I am not afraid of much at all. I understand that you want to believe that you understand things but I think you are going to find out that there are others in the world that will put a halt to nuclear energy.

1 catastrophic accident caused by a shitty design, shitty management, and shitty culture. 1 bad accident caused by a 40 ft tall wall of water and incompetence, and one overblown accident caused by poor operational awareness.

I'll put my engineering degree up against whatever basketweaving education you have any day of the week.

And yet all three of those were nuclear accidents. Unless you want to try and call them home accidents.
So how do you think that the next accident will go? Will we be lucky or unlucky?
Glad to see you are so upset. Do things always upset you when everyone doesn't bow down and fall in line with your way of thinking?

The thing with accidents is you learn from each one. It's why air travel becomes safer every year.

And to me Chernobyl wasn't an accident, it was willful negligence from design to operation.

Ok so what did we learn from Fukushima? Not to build nuclear reactors where they come in contact with nature. There are how many areas that could be hit by nature?

Place your emergency generators somewhere where they can't be flooded out. Place the fuel for them likewise. Increase your emergency fuel supply.

We also learned that a containment structure will keep most of the core material in place.

Place them where they can't be flooded out. On top of a mountain?
Yes indeed most of the core material. Got to love the most part of that. In other words loss of some is acceptable.

Or build a better sea-wall, another plant in Japan had a bigger one and came out just fine.

The containment worked for the most part, as opposed to no containment at Chernobyl. The only hotspot really remaining at Fukushima is the plant itself, similar to TMI, but larger in scope.

So we just need to fiqure out how to build something that nature can't tear down. Right... Again for the most part. So of course after two or three thousand years both will be safe.
We don't need to worry. We just need to build things that nature or man can't get into or destroy. Then if we don't we can be very happy and celebrate that only a potion of the core material is gone. Because only a portion is now considered acceptable. Then all we have to do is again try to build something that can withstand nature and humans for two or three thousand years.

Do you remember what was said about doing the same thing over and over again?

So The Nuclear Industry is the only one you want to apply a Zero Risk principle towards, while other energy generation methods are allowed a lesser standard?

No I would love it if everything man did was zero risk. But no matter what he does there will never be zero risk. We have had fire for centuries yet it is not zero risk.
The only thing is if you blow up and completely level a natural gas electrical generation plant there is little to no risk of the ground being uninhabitable for generations. There is no risk of wind blowing hazardous radiation to other areas.

Man is an inherently risk taking animal. If he were not he would never have done more the eat, sleep and shit. Every time we get on a plane, car or even walk across the street we take risks. We risked many times going into space or going to the moon. We risk many lives every time a submarine leaves port. But as I pointed out if an aircraft fails only those immediately affected are lost. And yes that takes into account anyone hit by it.
If a nuclear reactor fails how many are affected? What would be an acceptable loss? For how many years are we going to hope that the area affected won't be used, traveled or visited?

It depends on the level of failure. Based on US experience with our one accident, the affected area is the reactor itself. For Fukushima the long term impact is the reactor complex itself. Only Chernobyl has had quantifiable long term impacts over a wide area, and even those appear to be mitigating faster than we expected.

I guess you are unfamiliar with the radioactive water leaking from Fukushima.

How much is still leaving the plant? The Wiki article only has a number for 2013, tells about containment procedures, and then doesn't say anything.

 

[martybegan]

While it is never acknowledged by the political Left, the American Commercial Nuclear Power industry has the best safety record of any industry in all of human history. Since its inception in the early 1950's there has not been a single radiation-related fatality - or even sickness - in the entire industry. The safety precautions that are mandated and followed in nuclear power stations are SO thorough and SO all-encompassing that the cancer rate for nuclear power employees is lower than for the general population (same for the Nuclear Navy).

You might ask, "What about THREE MILE ISLAND???" Well, what about it? Not a single injury or fatality, not even a mild case of radiation sickness. Nothing. Just a lot of hysteria, largely fueled by the unfortunate coincidence of this relatively insignificant accident with the film, "The China Syndrome."

There is no doubt that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission takes great pride in this accomplishment, and in a sense it should. Many of the precautions that maintain this incredible safety record come directly from that august body.

But the NRC has, in its neurotic enthusiasm, created a situation where a new nuclear power plant is, for all practical purposes, infinitely expensive. Permitting alone can take ten years. Manufacturing and construction are so restrictively managed that they are at least 2-3 times more costly than would be building exactly the same facilities for some other normally-regulated purpose.

I worked in Purchasing for a nuclear power company for a few years, and imagine the cost impact of buying a normal commercial item - say a large industrial valve or pump - for which the warranty will not start for three or four years, and even that date is highly speculative, given the regulatory environment. We were paying 3-5 times the Catalog Price of standard commercial equipment, mainly so that the manufacturer could cover the expected warranty risk.

But this regulatory micro-management is not necessary. Even though the current designs are "new," they are all based on proven designs, and the improvements simply make them safer than the existing plants that have been in service - some of them - for more than thirty years. The latest major innovations render "meltdown" impossible, as the cooling water continues to flow even when the reactor is dormant (but still hot).

Having virtually given up on building a safe, proven nuclear power plant of conventional size, the industry pins its hopes on Small Modular Reactors ("SMR's") which can be pre-manufactured and delivered to a site, and combined with other similar reactors to meet the needs of that utility. Good luck with that.

But it represents the Industry just throwing up its hands and acknowledging that the regulatory framework makes building a nuclear power plant impossible, even though we have the technology to do it in an economically feasible manner - even with natural gas breathing down its figurative neck. The actual cost of nuclear power is microscopic; you are simply controlling a natural phenomenon and siphoning off the heat that it generates.

Mark it well: we have foolishly and neurotically regulated this industry out of existence at a time when "we" claim to need sources of energy that do not generate greenhouse gases.

We have met the enemy and...well, you know the rest.

The biggest problem with nuclear is the waste. You can not go near it for thousands of years. We are leaving a trap for our prodigy. Will they have any idea not to enter an area so full of nuclear waste? We have no idea.

The waste is usually manageable, and what is created per unit power generated is miniscule compared to other waste streams for other power sources. (remember combustion products from fossil fuel power generation is a waste stream).

The key is proper labelling, design of containment, and location of containment. If we get to a point where the labels aren't maintained or understood we are probably looking at a planet of the apes level collapse of civilization anyway.

Look back a couple thousand years what language was spoken here? What language was spoken in Italy? I don't seem to remember a planet of the apes style collapse in my history books.
Perhaps you would be so kind as to point out my lack of education on that matter?
How many cities have been discovered over the last hundred years that were unknown to us? Care to guess that it was more then one? If we can forget the location of even one city than how would it be such a stretch of the imagination to forget the location of even one depository?

They didn't have the level of technological ability we have, both with regards to the storage of, and dissemination of, information. Also you are talking about cities, not intentionally designed isolation facilities for nuclear waste. Waste Depositories would be placed in the middle of nowhere, probably buried deep inside a mountain, then re-enforced with tons of concrete and steel. Access would be limited, and multiple layers of warnings and control methods would be used for any access.

In a few thousand years one would hope anyone "stumbling" into something like this would still have the cognitive ability to recognize warning signs and giant radiation symbols all over the place if they decided to dig into one of these repositories.

So did recognize any of the languages spoken two thousand years ago at first sight? A lot of waste is being stored in an old salt mine. Remember the Washington state spill a few years back. If you really want to learn do a quick search of nuclear waste accidents.

If in 1000 years they are too dumb to ignore the visual warnings, and the fact they have to dig/cut/burn through several containment structures and vessels, i say fuck em.

That's assuming some one never makes a mistake or we don't have a leak into the ground water.

If you create impossible conditions for something you make it impossible. The concept is risk mitigation, not risk elimination.

The idea is to layer the defenses so just one or two mistakes or incidents don't lead to total failure.

If you look at most disasters, one bad thing isn't usually enough, it requires a sequence of bad events for the worst to happen.

Sometimes it isn't just layered defenses.
Love canal comes to mind.
The release of chemical gases in India.
Chernobyl, three mile island. Fukushima.
Numerous leaks of radioactive waste.
We have been lucky. Can we hope that we can continue with luck?
Even if it is not completely man made, nature has shown us that we are not masters of this world no matter what we think.

TMI doesn't belong with the other two, hell even Fukishima doesn't belong with chernobyl.

In all the cases, multiple mistakes had to be made before anything really bad happened.

If you are that afraid of everything I suggest you find some place in the woods and build a concrete cabin with 4 ft thick walls and hide until you die of old age.

The funny thing is you can argue until you are blue in the face but they were all problems at nuclear facilities or man made problems as in love canal.
Lol. Actually I am not afraid of much at all. I understand that you want to believe that you understand things but I think you are going to find out that there are others in the world that will put a halt to nuclear energy.

1 catastrophic accident caused by a shitty design, shitty management, and shitty culture. 1 bad accident caused by a 40 ft tall wall of water and incompetence, and one overblown accident caused by poor operational awareness.

I'll put my engineering degree up against whatever basketweaving education you have any day of the week.

And yet all three of those were nuclear accidents. Unless you want to try and call them home accidents.
So how do you think that the next accident will go? Will we be lucky or unlucky?
Glad to see you are so upset. Do things always upset you when everyone doesn't bow down and fall in line with your way of thinking?

The thing with accidents is you learn from each one. It's why air travel becomes safer every year.

And to me Chernobyl wasn't an accident, it was willful negligence from design to operation.

Ok so what did we learn from Fukushima? Not to build nuclear reactors where they come in contact with nature. There are how many areas that could be hit by nature?

Place your emergency generators somewhere where they can't be flooded out. Place the fuel for them likewise. Increase your emergency fuel supply.

We also learned that a containment structure will keep most of the core material in place.

Place them where they can't be flooded out. On top of a mountain?
Yes indeed most of the core material. Got to love the most part of that. In other words loss of some is acceptable.

Or build a better sea-wall, another plant in Japan had a bigger one and came out just fine.

The containment worked for the most part, as opposed to no containment at Chernobyl. The only hotspot really remaining at Fukushima is the plant itself, similar to TMI, but larger in scope.

So we just need to fiqure out how to build something that nature can't tear down. Right... Again for the most part. So of course after two or three thousand years both will be safe.
We don't need to worry. We just need to build things that nature or man can't get into or destroy. Then if we don't we can be very happy and celebrate that only a potion of the core material is gone. Because only a portion is now considered acceptable. Then all we have to do is again try to build something that can withstand nature and humans for two or three thousand years.

Do you remember what was said about doing the same thing over and over again?

So The Nuclear Industry is the only one you want to apply a Zero Risk principle towards, while other energy generation methods are allowed a lesser standard?

No I would love it if everything man did was zero risk. But no matter what he does there will never be zero risk. We have had fire for centuries yet it is not zero risk.
The only thing is if you blow up and completely level a natural gas electrical generation plant there is little to no risk of the ground being uninhabitable for generations. There is no risk of wind blowing hazardous radiation to other areas.

Man is an inherently risk taking animal. If he were not he would never have done more the eat, sleep and shit. Every time we get on a plane, car or even walk across the street we take risks. We risked many times going into space or going to the moon. We risk many lives every time a submarine leaves port. But as I pointed out if an aircraft fails only those immediately affected are lost. And yes that takes into account anyone hit by it.
If a nuclear reactor fails how many are affected? What would be an acceptable loss? For how many years are we going to hope that the area affected won't be used, traveled or visited?

It depends on the level of failure. Based on US experience with our one accident, the affected area is the reactor itself. For Fukushima the long term impact is the reactor complex itself. Only Chernobyl has had quantifiable long term impacts over a wide area, and even those appear to be mitigating faster than we expected.

So we are always going to have success. There will never be a natural or man made disaster? No foreign or domestic terrorism successful cause of catastrophic failure?
I have no doubt that the Titanic, Apollo 13 and others felt the same way. No chance that anything could go wrong. I have no doubt that the most of the people that boarded and flew the planes that hit the World Trade Center felt that there was nothing that could go wrong.

The simple matter is things do go wrong. Hiding from that fact or trying to gloss over it does not make it go away.

After Titanic did we stop using Ocean Liners?

After Apollo 13 we never went into space again?

Where did I say things never go wrong? You are the one trying to apply a zero risk standard to one particular thing you don't like while being evasive about it.

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

While it is never acknowledged by the political Left, the American Commercial Nuclear Power industry has the best safety record of any industry in all of human history. Since its inception in the early 1950's there has not been a single radiation-related fatality - or even sickness - in the entire industry. The safety precautions that are mandated and followed in nuclear power stations are SO thorough and SO all-encompassing that the cancer rate for nuclear power employees is lower than for the general population (same for the Nuclear Navy).

You might ask, "What about THREE MILE ISLAND???" Well, what about it? Not a single injury or fatality, not even a mild case of radiation sickness. Nothing. Just a lot of hysteria, largely fueled by the unfortunate coincidence of this relatively insignificant accident with the film, "The China Syndrome."

There is no doubt that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission takes great pride in this accomplishment, and in a sense it should. Many of the precautions that maintain this incredible safety record come directly from that august body.

But the NRC has, in its neurotic enthusiasm, created a situation where a new nuclear power plant is, for all practical purposes, infinitely expensive. Permitting alone can take ten years. Manufacturing and construction are so restrictively managed that they are at least 2-3 times more costly than would be building exactly the same facilities for some other normally-regulated purpose.

I worked in Purchasing for a nuclear power company for a few years, and imagine the cost impact of buying a normal commercial item - say a large industrial valve or pump - for which the warranty will not start for three or four years, and even that date is highly speculative, given the regulatory environment. We were paying 3-5 times the Catalog Price of standard commercial equipment, mainly so that the manufacturer could cover the expected warranty risk.

But this regulatory micro-management is not necessary. Even though the current designs are "new," they are all based on proven designs, and the improvements simply make them safer than the existing plants that have been in service - some of them - for more than thirty years. The latest major innovations render "meltdown" impossible, as the cooling water continues to flow even when the reactor is dormant (but still hot).

Having virtually given up on building a safe, proven nuclear power plant of conventional size, the industry pins its hopes on Small Modular Reactors ("SMR's") which can be pre-manufactured and delivered to a site, and combined with other similar reactors to meet the needs of that utility. Good luck with that.

But it represents the Industry just throwing up its hands and acknowledging that the regulatory framework makes building a nuclear power plant impossible, even though we have the technology to do it in an economically feasible manner - even with natural gas breathing down its figurative neck. The actual cost of nuclear power is microscopic; you are simply controlling a natural phenomenon and siphoning off the heat that it generates.

Mark it well: we have foolishly and neurotically regulated this industry out of existence at a time when "we" claim to need sources of energy that do not generate greenhouse gases.

We have met the enemy and...well, you know the rest.

The biggest problem with nuclear is the waste. You can not go near it for thousands of years. We are leaving a trap for our prodigy. Will they have any idea not to enter an area so full of nuclear waste? We have no idea.

The waste is usually manageable, and what is created per unit power generated is miniscule compared to other waste streams for other power sources. (remember combustion products from fossil fuel power generation is a waste stream).

The key is proper labelling, design of containment, and location of containment. If we get to a point where the labels aren't maintained or understood we are probably looking at a planet of the apes level collapse of civilization anyway.

Look back a couple thousand years what language was spoken here? What language was spoken in Italy? I don't seem to remember a planet of the apes style collapse in my history books.
Perhaps you would be so kind as to point out my lack of education on that matter?
How many cities have been discovered over the last hundred years that were unknown to us? Care to guess that it was more then one? If we can forget the location of even one city than how would it be such a stretch of the imagination to forget the location of even one depository?

They didn't have the level of technological ability we have, both with regards to the storage of, and dissemination of, information. Also you are talking about cities, not intentionally designed isolation facilities for nuclear waste. Waste Depositories would be placed in the middle of nowhere, probably buried deep inside a mountain, then re-enforced with tons of concrete and steel. Access would be limited, and multiple layers of warnings and control methods would be used for any access.

In a few thousand years one would hope anyone "stumbling" into something like this would still have the cognitive ability to recognize warning signs and giant radiation symbols all over the place if they decided to dig into one of these repositories.

So did recognize any of the languages spoken two thousand years ago at first sight? A lot of waste is being stored in an old salt mine. Remember the Washington state spill a few years back. If you really want to learn do a quick search of nuclear waste accidents.

If in 1000 years they are too dumb to ignore the visual warnings, and the fact they have to dig/cut/burn through several containment structures and vessels, i say fuck em.

That's assuming some one never makes a mistake or we don't have a leak into the ground water.

If you create impossible conditions for something you make it impossible. The concept is risk mitigation, not risk elimination.

The idea is to layer the defenses so just one or two mistakes or incidents don't lead to total failure.

If you look at most disasters, one bad thing isn't usually enough, it requires a sequence of bad events for the worst to happen.

Sometimes it isn't just layered defenses.
Love canal comes to mind.
The release of chemical gases in India.
Chernobyl, three mile island. Fukushima.
Numerous leaks of radioactive waste.
We have been lucky. Can we hope that we can continue with luck?
Even if it is not completely man made, nature has shown us that we are not masters of this world no matter what we think.

TMI doesn't belong with the other two, hell even Fukishima doesn't belong with chernobyl.

In all the cases, multiple mistakes had to be made before anything really bad happened.

If you are that afraid of everything I suggest you find some place in the woods and build a concrete cabin with 4 ft thick walls and hide until you die of old age.

The funny thing is you can argue until you are blue in the face but they were all problems at nuclear facilities or man made problems as in love canal.
Lol. Actually I am not afraid of much at all. I understand that you want to believe that you understand things but I think you are going to find out that there are others in the world that will put a halt to nuclear energy.

1 catastrophic accident caused by a shitty design, shitty management, and shitty culture. 1 bad accident caused by a 40 ft tall wall of water and incompetence, and one overblown accident caused by poor operational awareness.

I'll put my engineering degree up against whatever basketweaving education you have any day of the week.

And yet all three of those were nuclear accidents. Unless you want to try and call them home accidents.
So how do you think that the next accident will go? Will we be lucky or unlucky?
Glad to see you are so upset. Do things always upset you when everyone doesn't bow down and fall in line with your way of thinking?

The thing with accidents is you learn from each one. It's why air travel becomes safer every year.

And to me Chernobyl wasn't an accident, it was willful negligence from design to operation.

Ok so what did we learn from Fukushima? Not to build nuclear reactors where they come in contact with nature. There are how many areas that could be hit by nature?

Place your emergency generators somewhere where they can't be flooded out. Place the fuel for them likewise. Increase your emergency fuel supply.

We also learned that a containment structure will keep most of the core material in place.

Place them where they can't be flooded out. On top of a mountain?
Yes indeed most of the core material. Got to love the most part of that. In other words loss of some is acceptable.

Or build a better sea-wall, another plant in Japan had a bigger one and came out just fine.

The containment worked for the most part, as opposed to no containment at Chernobyl. The only hotspot really remaining at Fukushima is the plant itself, similar to TMI, but larger in scope.

So we just need to fiqure out how to build something that nature can't tear down. Right... Again for the most part. So of course after two or three thousand years both will be safe.
We don't need to worry. We just need to build things that nature or man can't get into or destroy. Then if we don't we can be very happy and celebrate that only a potion of the core material is gone. Because only a portion is now considered acceptable. Then all we have to do is again try to build something that can withstand nature and humans for two or three thousand years.

Do you remember what was said about doing the same thing over and over again?

So The Nuclear Industry is the only one you want to apply a Zero Risk principle towards, while other energy generation methods are allowed a lesser standard?

No I would love it if everything man did was zero risk. But no matter what he does there will never be zero risk. We have had fire for centuries yet it is not zero risk.
The only thing is if you blow up and completely level a natural gas electrical generation plant there is little to no risk of the ground being uninhabitable for generations. There is no risk of wind blowing hazardous radiation to other areas.

Man is an inherently risk taking animal. If he were not he would never have done more the eat, sleep and shit. Every time we get on a plane, car or even walk across the street we take risks. We risked many times going into space or going to the moon. We risk many lives every time a submarine leaves port. But as I pointed out if an aircraft fails only those immediately affected are lost. And yes that takes into account anyone hit by it.
If a nuclear reactor fails how many are affected? What would be an acceptable loss? For how many years are we going to hope that the area affected won't be used, traveled or visited?

It depends on the level of failure. Based on US experience with our one accident, the affected area is the reactor itself. For Fukushima the long term impact is the reactor complex itself. Only Chernobyl has had quantifiable long term impacts over a wide area, and even those appear to be mitigating faster than we expected.

I guess you are unfamiliar with the radioactive water leaking from Fukushima.

How much is still leaving the plant? The Wiki article only has a number for 2013, tells about containment procedures, and then doesn't say anything.

No one knows. That is the scary part! The area of leakage is still flooded.

 

[martybegan]

While it is never acknowledged by the political Left, the American Commercial Nuclear Power industry has the best safety record of any industry in all of human history. Since its inception in the early 1950's there has not been a single radiation-related fatality - or even sickness - in the entire industry. The safety precautions that are mandated and followed in nuclear power stations are SO thorough and SO all-encompassing that the cancer rate for nuclear power employees is lower than for the general population (same for the Nuclear Navy).

You might ask, "What about THREE MILE ISLAND???" Well, what about it? Not a single injury or fatality, not even a mild case of radiation sickness. Nothing. Just a lot of hysteria, largely fueled by the unfortunate coincidence of this relatively insignificant accident with the film, "The China Syndrome."

There is no doubt that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission takes great pride in this accomplishment, and in a sense it should. Many of the precautions that maintain this incredible safety record come directly from that august body.

But the NRC has, in its neurotic enthusiasm, created a situation where a new nuclear power plant is, for all practical purposes, infinitely expensive. Permitting alone can take ten years. Manufacturing and construction are so restrictively managed that they are at least 2-3 times more costly than would be building exactly the same facilities for some other normally-regulated purpose.

I worked in Purchasing for a nuclear power company for a few years, and imagine the cost impact of buying a normal commercial item - say a large industrial valve or pump - for which the warranty will not start for three or four years, and even that date is highly speculative, given the regulatory environment. We were paying 3-5 times the Catalog Price of standard commercial equipment, mainly so that the manufacturer could cover the expected warranty risk.

But this regulatory micro-management is not necessary. Even though the current designs are "new," they are all based on proven designs, and the improvements simply make them safer than the existing plants that have been in service - some of them - for more than thirty years. The latest major innovations render "meltdown" impossible, as the cooling water continues to flow even when the reactor is dormant (but still hot).

Having virtually given up on building a safe, proven nuclear power plant of conventional size, the industry pins its hopes on Small Modular Reactors ("SMR's") which can be pre-manufactured and delivered to a site, and combined with other similar reactors to meet the needs of that utility. Good luck with that.

But it represents the Industry just throwing up its hands and acknowledging that the regulatory framework makes building a nuclear power plant impossible, even though we have the technology to do it in an economically feasible manner - even with natural gas breathing down its figurative neck. The actual cost of nuclear power is microscopic; you are simply controlling a natural phenomenon and siphoning off the heat that it generates.

Mark it well: we have foolishly and neurotically regulated this industry out of existence at a time when "we" claim to need sources of energy that do not generate greenhouse gases.

We have met the enemy and...well, you know the rest.

The biggest problem with nuclear is the waste. You can not go near it for thousands of years. We are leaving a trap for our prodigy. Will they have any idea not to enter an area so full of nuclear waste? We have no idea.

The waste is usually manageable, and what is created per unit power generated is miniscule compared to other waste streams for other power sources. (remember combustion products from fossil fuel power generation is a waste stream).

The key is proper labelling, design of containment, and location of containment. If we get to a point where the labels aren't maintained or understood we are probably looking at a planet of the apes level collapse of civilization anyway.

Look back a couple thousand years what language was spoken here? What language was spoken in Italy? I don't seem to remember a planet of the apes style collapse in my history books.
Perhaps you would be so kind as to point out my lack of education on that matter?
How many cities have been discovered over the last hundred years that were unknown to us? Care to guess that it was more then one? If we can forget the location of even one city than how would it be such a stretch of the imagination to forget the location of even one depository?

They didn't have the level of technological ability we have, both with regards to the storage of, and dissemination of, information. Also you are talking about cities, not intentionally designed isolation facilities for nuclear waste. Waste Depositories would be placed in the middle of nowhere, probably buried deep inside a mountain, then re-enforced with tons of concrete and steel. Access would be limited, and multiple layers of warnings and control methods would be used for any access.

In a few thousand years one would hope anyone "stumbling" into something like this would still have the cognitive ability to recognize warning signs and giant radiation symbols all over the place if they decided to dig into one of these repositories.

So did recognize any of the languages spoken two thousand years ago at first sight? A lot of waste is being stored in an old salt mine. Remember the Washington state spill a few years back. If you really want to learn do a quick search of nuclear waste accidents.

If in 1000 years they are too dumb to ignore the visual warnings, and the fact they have to dig/cut/burn through several containment structures and vessels, i say fuck em.

That's assuming some one never makes a mistake or we don't have a leak into the ground water.

If you create impossible conditions for something you make it impossible. The concept is risk mitigation, not risk elimination.

The idea is to layer the defenses so just one or two mistakes or incidents don't lead to total failure.

If you look at most disasters, one bad thing isn't usually enough, it requires a sequence of bad events for the worst to happen.

Sometimes it isn't just layered defenses.
Love canal comes to mind.
The release of chemical gases in India.
Chernobyl, three mile island. Fukushima.
Numerous leaks of radioactive waste.
We have been lucky. Can we hope that we can continue with luck?
Even if it is not completely man made, nature has shown us that we are not masters of this world no matter what we think.

TMI doesn't belong with the other two, hell even Fukishima doesn't belong with chernobyl.

In all the cases, multiple mistakes had to be made before anything really bad happened.

If you are that afraid of everything I suggest you find some place in the woods and build a concrete cabin with 4 ft thick walls and hide until you die of old age.

The funny thing is you can argue until you are blue in the face but they were all problems at nuclear facilities or man made problems as in love canal.
Lol. Actually I am not afraid of much at all. I understand that you want to believe that you understand things but I think you are going to find out that there are others in the world that will put a halt to nuclear energy.

1 catastrophic accident caused by a shitty design, shitty management, and shitty culture. 1 bad accident caused by a 40 ft tall wall of water and incompetence, and one overblown accident caused by poor operational awareness.

I'll put my engineering degree up against whatever basketweaving education you have any day of the week.

And yet all three of those were nuclear accidents. Unless you want to try and call them home accidents.
So how do you think that the next accident will go? Will we be lucky or unlucky?
Glad to see you are so upset. Do things always upset you when everyone doesn't bow down and fall in line with your way of thinking?

The thing with accidents is you learn from each one. It's why air travel becomes safer every year.

And to me Chernobyl wasn't an accident, it was willful negligence from design to operation.

Ok so what did we learn from Fukushima? Not to build nuclear reactors where they come in contact with nature. There are how many areas that could be hit by nature?

Place your emergency generators somewhere where they can't be flooded out. Place the fuel for them likewise. Increase your emergency fuel supply.

We also learned that a containment structure will keep most of the core material in place.

Place them where they can't be flooded out. On top of a mountain?
Yes indeed most of the core material. Got to love the most part of that. In other words loss of some is acceptable.

Or build a better sea-wall, another plant in Japan had a bigger one and came out just fine.

The containment worked for the most part, as opposed to no containment at Chernobyl. The only hotspot really remaining at Fukushima is the plant itself, similar to TMI, but larger in scope.

So we just need to fiqure out how to build something that nature can't tear down. Right... Again for the most part. So of course after two or three thousand years both will be safe.
We don't need to worry. We just need to build things that nature or man can't get into or destroy. Then if we don't we can be very happy and celebrate that only a potion of the core material is gone. Because only a portion is now considered acceptable. Then all we have to do is again try to build something that can withstand nature and humans for two or three thousand years.

Do you remember what was said about doing the same thing over and over again?

So The Nuclear Industry is the only one you want to apply a Zero Risk principle towards, while other energy generation methods are allowed a lesser standard?

No I would love it if everything man did was zero risk. But no matter what he does there will never be zero risk. We have had fire for centuries yet it is not zero risk.
The only thing is if you blow up and completely level a natural gas electrical generation plant there is little to no risk of the ground being uninhabitable for generations. There is no risk of wind blowing hazardous radiation to other areas.

Man is an inherently risk taking animal. If he were not he would never have done more the eat, sleep and shit. Every time we get on a plane, car or even walk across the street we take risks. We risked many times going into space or going to the moon. We risk many lives every time a submarine leaves port. But as I pointed out if an aircraft fails only those immediately affected are lost. And yes that takes into account anyone hit by it.
If a nuclear reactor fails how many are affected? What would be an acceptable loss? For how many years are we going to hope that the area affected won't be used, traveled or visited?

It depends on the level of failure. Based on US experience with our one accident, the affected area is the reactor itself. For Fukushima the long term impact is the reactor complex itself. Only Chernobyl has had quantifiable long term impacts over a wide area, and even those appear to be mitigating faster than we expected.

I guess you are unfamiliar with the radioactive water leaking from Fukushima.

How much is still leaving the plant? The Wiki article only has a number for 2013, tells about containment procedures, and then doesn't say anything.

No one knows. That is the scary part! The area of leakage is still flooded.

Is it no one knows, or is it the amount getting out to the environment is not something to worry about?

CS-137 is one of the most measured for isotopes out there, and any large concentration would be pretty easy to find and monitor.

If a small amount is getting out into the Ocean, dilution and dispersion might be reducing the signature to background levels within a short distance of the leak source.

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

While it is never acknowledged by the political Left, the American Commercial Nuclear Power industry has the best safety record of any industry in all of human history. Since its inception in the early 1950's there has not been a single radiation-related fatality - or even sickness - in the entire industry. The safety precautions that are mandated and followed in nuclear power stations are SO thorough and SO all-encompassing that the cancer rate for nuclear power employees is lower than for the general population (same for the Nuclear Navy).

You might ask, "What about THREE MILE ISLAND???" Well, what about it? Not a single injury or fatality, not even a mild case of radiation sickness. Nothing. Just a lot of hysteria, largely fueled by the unfortunate coincidence of this relatively insignificant accident with the film, "The China Syndrome."

There is no doubt that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission takes great pride in this accomplishment, and in a sense it should. Many of the precautions that maintain this incredible safety record come directly from that august body.

But the NRC has, in its neurotic enthusiasm, created a situation where a new nuclear power plant is, for all practical purposes, infinitely expensive. Permitting alone can take ten years. Manufacturing and construction are so restrictively managed that they are at least 2-3 times more costly than would be building exactly the same facilities for some other normally-regulated purpose.

I worked in Purchasing for a nuclear power company for a few years, and imagine the cost impact of buying a normal commercial item - say a large industrial valve or pump - for which the warranty will not start for three or four years, and even that date is highly speculative, given the regulatory environment. We were paying 3-5 times the Catalog Price of standard commercial equipment, mainly so that the manufacturer could cover the expected warranty risk.

But this regulatory micro-management is not necessary. Even though the current designs are "new," they are all based on proven designs, and the improvements simply make them safer than the existing plants that have been in service - some of them - for more than thirty years. The latest major innovations render "meltdown" impossible, as the cooling water continues to flow even when the reactor is dormant (but still hot).

Having virtually given up on building a safe, proven nuclear power plant of conventional size, the industry pins its hopes on Small Modular Reactors ("SMR's") which can be pre-manufactured and delivered to a site, and combined with other similar reactors to meet the needs of that utility. Good luck with that.

But it represents the Industry just throwing up its hands and acknowledging that the regulatory framework makes building a nuclear power plant impossible, even though we have the technology to do it in an economically feasible manner - even with natural gas breathing down its figurative neck. The actual cost of nuclear power is microscopic; you are simply controlling a natural phenomenon and siphoning off the heat that it generates.

Mark it well: we have foolishly and neurotically regulated this industry out of existence at a time when "we" claim to need sources of energy that do not generate greenhouse gases.

We have met the enemy and...well, you know the rest.

The biggest problem with nuclear is the waste. You can not go near it for thousands of years. We are leaving a trap for our prodigy. Will they have any idea not to enter an area so full of nuclear waste? We have no idea.

The waste is usually manageable, and what is created per unit power generated is miniscule compared to other waste streams for other power sources. (remember combustion products from fossil fuel power generation is a waste stream).

The key is proper labelling, design of containment, and location of containment. If we get to a point where the labels aren't maintained or understood we are probably looking at a planet of the apes level collapse of civilization anyway.

Look back a couple thousand years what language was spoken here? What language was spoken in Italy? I don't seem to remember a planet of the apes style collapse in my history books.
Perhaps you would be so kind as to point out my lack of education on that matter?
How many cities have been discovered over the last hundred years that were unknown to us? Care to guess that it was more then one? If we can forget the location of even one city than how would it be such a stretch of the imagination to forget the location of even one depository?

They didn't have the level of technological ability we have, both with regards to the storage of, and dissemination of, information. Also you are talking about cities, not intentionally designed isolation facilities for nuclear waste. Waste Depositories would be placed in the middle of nowhere, probably buried deep inside a mountain, then re-enforced with tons of concrete and steel. Access would be limited, and multiple layers of warnings and control methods would be used for any access.

In a few thousand years one would hope anyone "stumbling" into something like this would still have the cognitive ability to recognize warning signs and giant radiation symbols all over the place if they decided to dig into one of these repositories.

So did recognize any of the languages spoken two thousand years ago at first sight? A lot of waste is being stored in an old salt mine. Remember the Washington state spill a few years back. If you really want to learn do a quick search of nuclear waste accidents.

If in 1000 years they are too dumb to ignore the visual warnings, and the fact they have to dig/cut/burn through several containment structures and vessels, i say fuck em.

That's assuming some one never makes a mistake or we don't have a leak into the ground water.

If you create impossible conditions for something you make it impossible. The concept is risk mitigation, not risk elimination.

The idea is to layer the defenses so just one or two mistakes or incidents don't lead to total failure.

If you look at most disasters, one bad thing isn't usually enough, it requires a sequence of bad events for the worst to happen.

Sometimes it isn't just layered defenses.
Love canal comes to mind.
The release of chemical gases in India.
Chernobyl, three mile island. Fukushima.
Numerous leaks of radioactive waste.
We have been lucky. Can we hope that we can continue with luck?
Even if it is not completely man made, nature has shown us that we are not masters of this world no matter what we think.

TMI doesn't belong with the other two, hell even Fukishima doesn't belong with chernobyl.

In all the cases, multiple mistakes had to be made before anything really bad happened.

If you are that afraid of everything I suggest you find some place in the woods and build a concrete cabin with 4 ft thick walls and hide until you die of old age.

The funny thing is you can argue until you are blue in the face but they were all problems at nuclear facilities or man made problems as in love canal.
Lol. Actually I am not afraid of much at all. I understand that you want to believe that you understand things but I think you are going to find out that there are others in the world that will put a halt to nuclear energy.

1 catastrophic accident caused by a shitty design, shitty management, and shitty culture. 1 bad accident caused by a 40 ft tall wall of water and incompetence, and one overblown accident caused by poor operational awareness.

I'll put my engineering degree up against whatever basketweaving education you have any day of the week.

And yet all three of those were nuclear accidents. Unless you want to try and call them home accidents.
So how do you think that the next accident will go? Will we be lucky or unlucky?
Glad to see you are so upset. Do things always upset you when everyone doesn't bow down and fall in line with your way of thinking?

The thing with accidents is you learn from each one. It's why air travel becomes safer every year.

And to me Chernobyl wasn't an accident, it was willful negligence from design to operation.

Ok so what did we learn from Fukushima? Not to build nuclear reactors where they come in contact with nature. There are how many areas that could be hit by nature?

Place your emergency generators somewhere where they can't be flooded out. Place the fuel for them likewise. Increase your emergency fuel supply.

We also learned that a containment structure will keep most of the core material in place.

Place them where they can't be flooded out. On top of a mountain?
Yes indeed most of the core material. Got to love the most part of that. In other words loss of some is acceptable.

Or build a better sea-wall, another plant in Japan had a bigger one and came out just fine.

The containment worked for the most part, as opposed to no containment at Chernobyl. The only hotspot really remaining at Fukushima is the plant itself, similar to TMI, but larger in scope.

So we just need to fiqure out how to build something that nature can't tear down. Right... Again for the most part. So of course after two or three thousand years both will be safe.
We don't need to worry. We just need to build things that nature or man can't get into or destroy. Then if we don't we can be very happy and celebrate that only a potion of the core material is gone. Because only a portion is now considered acceptable. Then all we have to do is again try to build something that can withstand nature and humans for two or three thousand years.

Do you remember what was said about doing the same thing over and over again?

So The Nuclear Industry is the only one you want to apply a Zero Risk principle towards, while other energy generation methods are allowed a lesser standard?

No I would love it if everything man did was zero risk. But no matter what he does there will never be zero risk. We have had fire for centuries yet it is not zero risk.
The only thing is if you blow up and completely level a natural gas electrical generation plant there is little to no risk of the ground being uninhabitable for generations. There is no risk of wind blowing hazardous radiation to other areas.

Man is an inherently risk taking animal. If he were not he would never have done more the eat, sleep and shit. Every time we get on a plane, car or even walk across the street we take risks. We risked many times going into space or going to the moon. We risk many lives every time a submarine leaves port. But as I pointed out if an aircraft fails only those immediately affected are lost. And yes that takes into account anyone hit by it.
If a nuclear reactor fails how many are affected? What would be an acceptable loss? For how many years are we going to hope that the area affected won't be used, traveled or visited?

It depends on the level of failure. Based on US experience with our one accident, the affected area is the reactor itself. For Fukushima the long term impact is the reactor complex itself. Only Chernobyl has had quantifiable long term impacts over a wide area, and even those appear to be mitigating faster than we expected.

I guess you are unfamiliar with the radioactive water leaking from Fukushima.

How much is still leaving the plant? The Wiki article only has a number for 2013, tells about containment procedures, and then doesn't say anything.

No one knows. That is the scary part! The area of leakage is still flooded.

Is it no one knows, or is it the amount getting out to the environment is not something to worry about?

CS-137 is one of the most measured for isotopes out there, and any large concentration would be pretty easy to find and monitor.

If a small amount is getting out into the Ocean, dilution and dispersion might be reducing the signature to background levels within a short distance of the leak source.

That would be great if the radiation was not found along the waters of the west coast of the US.

 

[martybegan]

While it is never acknowledged by the political Left, the American Commercial Nuclear Power industry has the best safety record of any industry in all of human history. Since its inception in the early 1950's there has not been a single radiation-related fatality - or even sickness - in the entire industry. The safety precautions that are mandated and followed in nuclear power stations are SO thorough and SO all-encompassing that the cancer rate for nuclear power employees is lower than for the general population (same for the Nuclear Navy).

You might ask, "What about THREE MILE ISLAND???" Well, what about it? Not a single injury or fatality, not even a mild case of radiation sickness. Nothing. Just a lot of hysteria, largely fueled by the unfortunate coincidence of this relatively insignificant accident with the film, "The China Syndrome."

There is no doubt that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission takes great pride in this accomplishment, and in a sense it should. Many of the precautions that maintain this incredible safety record come directly from that august body.

But the NRC has, in its neurotic enthusiasm, created a situation where a new nuclear power plant is, for all practical purposes, infinitely expensive. Permitting alone can take ten years. Manufacturing and construction are so restrictively managed that they are at least 2-3 times more costly than would be building exactly the same facilities for some other normally-regulated purpose.

I worked in Purchasing for a nuclear power company for a few years, and imagine the cost impact of buying a normal commercial item - say a large industrial valve or pump - for which the warranty will not start for three or four years, and even that date is highly speculative, given the regulatory environment. We were paying 3-5 times the Catalog Price of standard commercial equipment, mainly so that the manufacturer could cover the expected warranty risk.

But this regulatory micro-management is not necessary. Even though the current designs are "new," they are all based on proven designs, and the improvements simply make them safer than the existing plants that have been in service - some of them - for more than thirty years. The latest major innovations render "meltdown" impossible, as the cooling water continues to flow even when the reactor is dormant (but still hot).

Having virtually given up on building a safe, proven nuclear power plant of conventional size, the industry pins its hopes on Small Modular Reactors ("SMR's") which can be pre-manufactured and delivered to a site, and combined with other similar reactors to meet the needs of that utility. Good luck with that.

But it represents the Industry just throwing up its hands and acknowledging that the regulatory framework makes building a nuclear power plant impossible, even though we have the technology to do it in an economically feasible manner - even with natural gas breathing down its figurative neck. The actual cost of nuclear power is microscopic; you are simply controlling a natural phenomenon and siphoning off the heat that it generates.

Mark it well: we have foolishly and neurotically regulated this industry out of existence at a time when "we" claim to need sources of energy that do not generate greenhouse gases.

We have met the enemy and...well, you know the rest.

The biggest problem with nuclear is the waste. You can not go near it for thousands of years. We are leaving a trap for our prodigy. Will they have any idea not to enter an area so full of nuclear waste? We have no idea.

The waste is usually manageable, and what is created per unit power generated is miniscule compared to other waste streams for other power sources. (remember combustion products from fossil fuel power generation is a waste stream).

The key is proper labelling, design of containment, and location of containment. If we get to a point where the labels aren't maintained or understood we are probably looking at a planet of the apes level collapse of civilization anyway.

Look back a couple thousand years what language was spoken here? What language was spoken in Italy? I don't seem to remember a planet of the apes style collapse in my history books.
Perhaps you would be so kind as to point out my lack of education on that matter?
How many cities have been discovered over the last hundred years that were unknown to us? Care to guess that it was more then one? If we can forget the location of even one city than how would it be such a stretch of the imagination to forget the location of even one depository?

They didn't have the level of technological ability we have, both with regards to the storage of, and dissemination of, information. Also you are talking about cities, not intentionally designed isolation facilities for nuclear waste. Waste Depositories would be placed in the middle of nowhere, probably buried deep inside a mountain, then re-enforced with tons of concrete and steel. Access would be limited, and multiple layers of warnings and control methods would be used for any access.

In a few thousand years one would hope anyone "stumbling" into something like this would still have the cognitive ability to recognize warning signs and giant radiation symbols all over the place if they decided to dig into one of these repositories.

So did recognize any of the languages spoken two thousand years ago at first sight? A lot of waste is being stored in an old salt mine. Remember the Washington state spill a few years back. If you really want to learn do a quick search of nuclear waste accidents.

If in 1000 years they are too dumb to ignore the visual warnings, and the fact they have to dig/cut/burn through several containment structures and vessels, i say fuck em.

That's assuming some one never makes a mistake or we don't have a leak into the ground water.

If you create impossible conditions for something you make it impossible. The concept is risk mitigation, not risk elimination.

The idea is to layer the defenses so just one or two mistakes or incidents don't lead to total failure.

If you look at most disasters, one bad thing isn't usually enough, it requires a sequence of bad events for the worst to happen.

Sometimes it isn't just layered defenses.
Love canal comes to mind.
The release of chemical gases in India.
Chernobyl, three mile island. Fukushima.
Numerous leaks of radioactive waste.
We have been lucky. Can we hope that we can continue with luck?
Even if it is not completely man made, nature has shown us that we are not masters of this world no matter what we think.

TMI doesn't belong with the other two, hell even Fukishima doesn't belong with chernobyl.

In all the cases, multiple mistakes had to be made before anything really bad happened.

If you are that afraid of everything I suggest you find some place in the woods and build a concrete cabin with 4 ft thick walls and hide until you die of old age.

The funny thing is you can argue until you are blue in the face but they were all problems at nuclear facilities or man made problems as in love canal.
Lol. Actually I am not afraid of much at all. I understand that you want to believe that you understand things but I think you are going to find out that there are others in the world that will put a halt to nuclear energy.

1 catastrophic accident caused by a shitty design, shitty management, and shitty culture. 1 bad accident caused by a 40 ft tall wall of water and incompetence, and one overblown accident caused by poor operational awareness.

I'll put my engineering degree up against whatever basketweaving education you have any day of the week.

And yet all three of those were nuclear accidents. Unless you want to try and call them home accidents.
So how do you think that the next accident will go? Will we be lucky or unlucky?
Glad to see you are so upset. Do things always upset you when everyone doesn't bow down and fall in line with your way of thinking?

The thing with accidents is you learn from each one. It's why air travel becomes safer every year.

And to me Chernobyl wasn't an accident, it was willful negligence from design to operation.

Ok so what did we learn from Fukushima? Not to build nuclear reactors where they come in contact with nature. There are how many areas that could be hit by nature?

Place your emergency generators somewhere where they can't be flooded out. Place the fuel for them likewise. Increase your emergency fuel supply.

We also learned that a containment structure will keep most of the core material in place.

Place them where they can't be flooded out. On top of a mountain?
Yes indeed most of the core material. Got to love the most part of that. In other words loss of some is acceptable.

Or build a better sea-wall, another plant in Japan had a bigger one and came out just fine.

The containment worked for the most part, as opposed to no containment at Chernobyl. The only hotspot really remaining at Fukushima is the plant itself, similar to TMI, but larger in scope.

So we just need to fiqure out how to build something that nature can't tear down. Right... Again for the most part. So of course after two or three thousand years both will be safe.
We don't need to worry. We just need to build things that nature or man can't get into or destroy. Then if we don't we can be very happy and celebrate that only a potion of the core material is gone. Because only a portion is now considered acceptable. Then all we have to do is again try to build something that can withstand nature and humans for two or three thousand years.

Do you remember what was said about doing the same thing over and over again?

So The Nuclear Industry is the only one you want to apply a Zero Risk principle towards, while other energy generation methods are allowed a lesser standard?

No I would love it if everything man did was zero risk. But no matter what he does there will never be zero risk. We have had fire for centuries yet it is not zero risk.
The only thing is if you blow up and completely level a natural gas electrical generation plant there is little to no risk of the ground being uninhabitable for generations. There is no risk of wind blowing hazardous radiation to other areas.

Man is an inherently risk taking animal. If he were not he would never have done more the eat, sleep and shit. Every time we get on a plane, car or even walk across the street we take risks. We risked many times going into space or going to the moon. We risk many lives every time a submarine leaves port. But as I pointed out if an aircraft fails only those immediately affected are lost. And yes that takes into account anyone hit by it.
If a nuclear reactor fails how many are affected? What would be an acceptable loss? For how many years are we going to hope that the area affected won't be used, traveled or visited?

It depends on the level of failure. Based on US experience with our one accident, the affected area is the reactor itself. For Fukushima the long term impact is the reactor complex itself. Only Chernobyl has had quantifiable long term impacts over a wide area, and even those appear to be mitigating faster than we expected.

I guess you are unfamiliar with the radioactive water leaking from Fukushima.

How much is still leaving the plant? The Wiki article only has a number for 2013, tells about containment procedures, and then doesn't say anything.

No one knows. That is the scary part! The area of leakage is still flooded.

Is it no one knows, or is it the amount getting out to the environment is not something to worry about?

CS-137 is one of the most measured for isotopes out there, and any large concentration would be pretty easy to find and monitor.

If a small amount is getting out into the Ocean, dilution and dispersion might be reducing the signature to background levels within a short distance of the leak source.

That would be great if the radiation was not found along the waters of the west coast of the US.

How long ago? How much above background levels? you do realize that radiation will ALWAYS be found pretty much everywhere, due to things like cosmic rays, decay of naturally occurring radioactive soils/rock, and even the residues of previous atomic tests?

The question is if these values exceed background in sufficent amounts to be harmful.

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

While it is never acknowledged by the political Left, the American Commercial Nuclear Power industry has the best safety record of any industry in all of human history. Since its inception in the early 1950's there has not been a single radiation-related fatality - or even sickness - in the entire industry. The safety precautions that are mandated and followed in nuclear power stations are SO thorough and SO all-encompassing that the cancer rate for nuclear power employees is lower than for the general population (same for the Nuclear Navy).

You might ask, "What about THREE MILE ISLAND???" Well, what about it? Not a single injury or fatality, not even a mild case of radiation sickness. Nothing. Just a lot of hysteria, largely fueled by the unfortunate coincidence of this relatively insignificant accident with the film, "The China Syndrome."

There is no doubt that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission takes great pride in this accomplishment, and in a sense it should. Many of the precautions that maintain this incredible safety record come directly from that august body.

But the NRC has, in its neurotic enthusiasm, created a situation where a new nuclear power plant is, for all practical purposes, infinitely expensive. Permitting alone can take ten years. Manufacturing and construction are so restrictively managed that they are at least 2-3 times more costly than would be building exactly the same facilities for some other normally-regulated purpose.

I worked in Purchasing for a nuclear power company for a few years, and imagine the cost impact of buying a normal commercial item - say a large industrial valve or pump - for which the warranty will not start for three or four years, and even that date is highly speculative, given the regulatory environment. We were paying 3-5 times the Catalog Price of standard commercial equipment, mainly so that the manufacturer could cover the expected warranty risk.

But this regulatory micro-management is not necessary. Even though the current designs are "new," they are all based on proven designs, and the improvements simply make them safer than the existing plants that have been in service - some of them - for more than thirty years. The latest major innovations render "meltdown" impossible, as the cooling water continues to flow even when the reactor is dormant (but still hot).

Having virtually given up on building a safe, proven nuclear power plant of conventional size, the industry pins its hopes on Small Modular Reactors ("SMR's") which can be pre-manufactured and delivered to a site, and combined with other similar reactors to meet the needs of that utility. Good luck with that.

But it represents the Industry just throwing up its hands and acknowledging that the regulatory framework makes building a nuclear power plant impossible, even though we have the technology to do it in an economically feasible manner - even with natural gas breathing down its figurative neck. The actual cost of nuclear power is microscopic; you are simply controlling a natural phenomenon and siphoning off the heat that it generates.

Mark it well: we have foolishly and neurotically regulated this industry out of existence at a time when "we" claim to need sources of energy that do not generate greenhouse gases.

We have met the enemy and...well, you know the rest.

The biggest problem with nuclear is the waste. You can not go near it for thousands of years. We are leaving a trap for our prodigy. Will they have any idea not to enter an area so full of nuclear waste? We have no idea.

The waste is usually manageable, and what is created per unit power generated is miniscule compared to other waste streams for other power sources. (remember combustion products from fossil fuel power generation is a waste stream).

The key is proper labelling, design of containment, and location of containment. If we get to a point where the labels aren't maintained or understood we are probably looking at a planet of the apes level collapse of civilization anyway.

Look back a couple thousand years what language was spoken here? What language was spoken in Italy? I don't seem to remember a planet of the apes style collapse in my history books.
Perhaps you would be so kind as to point out my lack of education on that matter?
How many cities have been discovered over the last hundred years that were unknown to us? Care to guess that it was more then one? If we can forget the location of even one city than how would it be such a stretch of the imagination to forget the location of even one depository?

They didn't have the level of technological ability we have, both with regards to the storage of, and dissemination of, information. Also you are talking about cities, not intentionally designed isolation facilities for nuclear waste. Waste Depositories would be placed in the middle of nowhere, probably buried deep inside a mountain, then re-enforced with tons of concrete and steel. Access would be limited, and multiple layers of warnings and control methods would be used for any access.

In a few thousand years one would hope anyone "stumbling" into something like this would still have the cognitive ability to recognize warning signs and giant radiation symbols all over the place if they decided to dig into one of these repositories.

So did recognize any of the languages spoken two thousand years ago at first sight? A lot of waste is being stored in an old salt mine. Remember the Washington state spill a few years back. If you really want to learn do a quick search of nuclear waste accidents.

If in 1000 years they are too dumb to ignore the visual warnings, and the fact they have to dig/cut/burn through several containment structures and vessels, i say fuck em.

That's assuming some one never makes a mistake or we don't have a leak into the ground water.

If you create impossible conditions for something you make it impossible. The concept is risk mitigation, not risk elimination.

The idea is to layer the defenses so just one or two mistakes or incidents don't lead to total failure.

If you look at most disasters, one bad thing isn't usually enough, it requires a sequence of bad events for the worst to happen.

Sometimes it isn't just layered defenses.
Love canal comes to mind.
The release of chemical gases in India.
Chernobyl, three mile island. Fukushima.
Numerous leaks of radioactive waste.
We have been lucky. Can we hope that we can continue with luck?
Even if it is not completely man made, nature has shown us that we are not masters of this world no matter what we think.

TMI doesn't belong with the other two, hell even Fukishima doesn't belong with chernobyl.

In all the cases, multiple mistakes had to be made before anything really bad happened.

If you are that afraid of everything I suggest you find some place in the woods and build a concrete cabin with 4 ft thick walls and hide until you die of old age.

The funny thing is you can argue until you are blue in the face but they were all problems at nuclear facilities or man made problems as in love canal.
Lol. Actually I am not afraid of much at all. I understand that you want to believe that you understand things but I think you are going to find out that there are others in the world that will put a halt to nuclear energy.

1 catastrophic accident caused by a shitty design, shitty management, and shitty culture. 1 bad accident caused by a 40 ft tall wall of water and incompetence, and one overblown accident caused by poor operational awareness.

I'll put my engineering degree up against whatever basketweaving education you have any day of the week.

And yet all three of those were nuclear accidents. Unless you want to try and call them home accidents.
So how do you think that the next accident will go? Will we be lucky or unlucky?
Glad to see you are so upset. Do things always upset you when everyone doesn't bow down and fall in line with your way of thinking?

The thing with accidents is you learn from each one. It's why air travel becomes safer every year.

And to me Chernobyl wasn't an accident, it was willful negligence from design to operation.

Ok so what did we learn from Fukushima? Not to build nuclear reactors where they come in contact with nature. There are how many areas that could be hit by nature?

Place your emergency generators somewhere where they can't be flooded out. Place the fuel for them likewise. Increase your emergency fuel supply.

We also learned that a containment structure will keep most of the core material in place.

Place them where they can't be flooded out. On top of a mountain?
Yes indeed most of the core material. Got to love the most part of that. In other words loss of some is acceptable.

Or build a better sea-wall, another plant in Japan had a bigger one and came out just fine.

The containment worked for the most part, as opposed to no containment at Chernobyl. The only hotspot really remaining at Fukushima is the plant itself, similar to TMI, but larger in scope.

So we just need to fiqure out how to build something that nature can't tear down. Right... Again for the most part. So of course after two or three thousand years both will be safe.
We don't need to worry. We just need to build things that nature or man can't get into or destroy. Then if we don't we can be very happy and celebrate that only a potion of the core material is gone. Because only a portion is now considered acceptable. Then all we have to do is again try to build something that can withstand nature and humans for two or three thousand years.

Do you remember what was said about doing the same thing over and over again?

So The Nuclear Industry is the only one you want to apply a Zero Risk principle towards, while other energy generation methods are allowed a lesser standard?

No I would love it if everything man did was zero risk. But no matter what he does there will never be zero risk. We have had fire for centuries yet it is not zero risk.
The only thing is if you blow up and completely level a natural gas electrical generation plant there is little to no risk of the ground being uninhabitable for generations. There is no risk of wind blowing hazardous radiation to other areas.

Man is an inherently risk taking animal. If he were not he would never have done more the eat, sleep and shit. Every time we get on a plane, car or even walk across the street we take risks. We risked many times going into space or going to the moon. We risk many lives every time a submarine leaves port. But as I pointed out if an aircraft fails only those immediately affected are lost. And yes that takes into account anyone hit by it.
If a nuclear reactor fails how many are affected? What would be an acceptable loss? For how many years are we going to hope that the area affected won't be used, traveled or visited?

It depends on the level of failure. Based on US experience with our one accident, the affected area is the reactor itself. For Fukushima the long term impact is the reactor complex itself. Only Chernobyl has had quantifiable long term impacts over a wide area, and even those appear to be mitigating faster than we expected.

I guess you are unfamiliar with the radioactive water leaking from Fukushima.

How much is still leaving the plant? The Wiki article only has a number for 2013, tells about containment procedures, and then doesn't say anything.

No one knows. That is the scary part! The area of leakage is still flooded.

Is it no one knows, or is it the amount getting out to the environment is not something to worry about?

CS-137 is one of the most measured for isotopes out there, and any large concentration would be pretty easy to find and monitor.

If a small amount is getting out into the Ocean, dilution and dispersion might be reducing the signature to background levels within a short distance of the leak source.

That would be great if the radiation was not found along the waters of the west coast of the US.

How long ago? How much above background levels? you do realize that radiation will ALWAYS be found pretty much everywhere, due to things like cosmic rays, decay of naturally occurring radioactive soils/rock, and even the residues of previous atomic tests?

The question is if these values exceed background in sufficent amounts to be harmful.

What we consider less than harmful is often very harmful. My doctor is concerned because of my radiation exposure in the military leading to my current health issues.

Also, since when is Cesium naturally occuring?

 

[martybegan]

While it is never acknowledged by the political Left, the American Commercial Nuclear Power industry has the best safety record of any industry in all of human history. Since its inception in the early 1950's there has not been a single radiation-related fatality - or even sickness - in the entire industry. The safety precautions that are mandated and followed in nuclear power stations are SO thorough and SO all-encompassing that the cancer rate for nuclear power employees is lower than for the general population (same for the Nuclear Navy).

You might ask, "What about THREE MILE ISLAND???" Well, what about it? Not a single injury or fatality, not even a mild case of radiation sickness. Nothing. Just a lot of hysteria, largely fueled by the unfortunate coincidence of this relatively insignificant accident with the film, "The China Syndrome."

There is no doubt that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission takes great pride in this accomplishment, and in a sense it should. Many of the precautions that maintain this incredible safety record come directly from that august body.

But the NRC has, in its neurotic enthusiasm, created a situation where a new nuclear power plant is, for all practical purposes, infinitely expensive. Permitting alone can take ten years. Manufacturing and construction are so restrictively managed that they are at least 2-3 times more costly than would be building exactly the same facilities for some other normally-regulated purpose.

I worked in Purchasing for a nuclear power company for a few years, and imagine the cost impact of buying a normal commercial item - say a large industrial valve or pump - for which the warranty will not start for three or four years, and even that date is highly speculative, given the regulatory environment. We were paying 3-5 times the Catalog Price of standard commercial equipment, mainly so that the manufacturer could cover the expected warranty risk.

But this regulatory micro-management is not necessary. Even though the current designs are "new," they are all based on proven designs, and the improvements simply make them safer than the existing plants that have been in service - some of them - for more than thirty years. The latest major innovations render "meltdown" impossible, as the cooling water continues to flow even when the reactor is dormant (but still hot).

Having virtually given up on building a safe, proven nuclear power plant of conventional size, the industry pins its hopes on Small Modular Reactors ("SMR's") which can be pre-manufactured and delivered to a site, and combined with other similar reactors to meet the needs of that utility. Good luck with that.

But it represents the Industry just throwing up its hands and acknowledging that the regulatory framework makes building a nuclear power plant impossible, even though we have the technology to do it in an economically feasible manner - even with natural gas breathing down its figurative neck. The actual cost of nuclear power is microscopic; you are simply controlling a natural phenomenon and siphoning off the heat that it generates.

Mark it well: we have foolishly and neurotically regulated this industry out of existence at a time when "we" claim to need sources of energy that do not generate greenhouse gases.

We have met the enemy and...well, you know the rest.

The biggest problem with nuclear is the waste. You can not go near it for thousands of years. We are leaving a trap for our prodigy. Will they have any idea not to enter an area so full of nuclear waste? We have no idea.

The waste is usually manageable, and what is created per unit power generated is miniscule compared to other waste streams for other power sources. (remember combustion products from fossil fuel power generation is a waste stream).

The key is proper labelling, design of containment, and location of containment. If we get to a point where the labels aren't maintained or understood we are probably looking at a planet of the apes level collapse of civilization anyway.

Look back a couple thousand years what language was spoken here? What language was spoken in Italy? I don't seem to remember a planet of the apes style collapse in my history books.
Perhaps you would be so kind as to point out my lack of education on that matter?
How many cities have been discovered over the last hundred years that were unknown to us? Care to guess that it was more then one? If we can forget the location of even one city than how would it be such a stretch of the imagination to forget the location of even one depository?

They didn't have the level of technological ability we have, both with regards to the storage of, and dissemination of, information. Also you are talking about cities, not intentionally designed isolation facilities for nuclear waste. Waste Depositories would be placed in the middle of nowhere, probably buried deep inside a mountain, then re-enforced with tons of concrete and steel. Access would be limited, and multiple layers of warnings and control methods would be used for any access.

In a few thousand years one would hope anyone "stumbling" into something like this would still have the cognitive ability to recognize warning signs and giant radiation symbols all over the place if they decided to dig into one of these repositories.

So did recognize any of the languages spoken two thousand years ago at first sight? A lot of waste is being stored in an old salt mine. Remember the Washington state spill a few years back. If you really want to learn do a quick search of nuclear waste accidents.

If in 1000 years they are too dumb to ignore the visual warnings, and the fact they have to dig/cut/burn through several containment structures and vessels, i say fuck em.

That's assuming some one never makes a mistake or we don't have a leak into the ground water.

If you create impossible conditions for something you make it impossible. The concept is risk mitigation, not risk elimination.

The idea is to layer the defenses so just one or two mistakes or incidents don't lead to total failure.

If you look at most disasters, one bad thing isn't usually enough, it requires a sequence of bad events for the worst to happen.

Sometimes it isn't just layered defenses.
Love canal comes to mind.
The release of chemical gases in India.
Chernobyl, three mile island. Fukushima.
Numerous leaks of radioactive waste.
We have been lucky. Can we hope that we can continue with luck?
Even if it is not completely man made, nature has shown us that we are not masters of this world no matter what we think.

TMI doesn't belong with the other two, hell even Fukishima doesn't belong with chernobyl.

In all the cases, multiple mistakes had to be made before anything really bad happened.

If you are that afraid of everything I suggest you find some place in the woods and build a concrete cabin with 4 ft thick walls and hide until you die of old age.

The funny thing is you can argue until you are blue in the face but they were all problems at nuclear facilities or man made problems as in love canal.
Lol. Actually I am not afraid of much at all. I understand that you want to believe that you understand things but I think you are going to find out that there are others in the world that will put a halt to nuclear energy.

1 catastrophic accident caused by a shitty design, shitty management, and shitty culture. 1 bad accident caused by a 40 ft tall wall of water and incompetence, and one overblown accident caused by poor operational awareness.

I'll put my engineering degree up against whatever basketweaving education you have any day of the week.

And yet all three of those were nuclear accidents. Unless you want to try and call them home accidents.
So how do you think that the next accident will go? Will we be lucky or unlucky?
Glad to see you are so upset. Do things always upset you when everyone doesn't bow down and fall in line with your way of thinking?

The thing with accidents is you learn from each one. It's why air travel becomes safer every year.

And to me Chernobyl wasn't an accident, it was willful negligence from design to operation.

Ok so what did we learn from Fukushima? Not to build nuclear reactors where they come in contact with nature. There are how many areas that could be hit by nature?

Place your emergency generators somewhere where they can't be flooded out. Place the fuel for them likewise. Increase your emergency fuel supply.

We also learned that a containment structure will keep most of the core material in place.

Place them where they can't be flooded out. On top of a mountain?
Yes indeed most of the core material. Got to love the most part of that. In other words loss of some is acceptable.

Or build a better sea-wall, another plant in Japan had a bigger one and came out just fine.

The containment worked for the most part, as opposed to no containment at Chernobyl. The only hotspot really remaining at Fukushima is the plant itself, similar to TMI, but larger in scope.

So we just need to fiqure out how to build something that nature can't tear down. Right... Again for the most part. So of course after two or three thousand years both will be safe.
We don't need to worry. We just need to build things that nature or man can't get into or destroy. Then if we don't we can be very happy and celebrate that only a potion of the core material is gone. Because only a portion is now considered acceptable. Then all we have to do is again try to build something that can withstand nature and humans for two or three thousand years.

Do you remember what was said about doing the same thing over and over again?

So The Nuclear Industry is the only one you want to apply a Zero Risk principle towards, while other energy generation methods are allowed a lesser standard?

No I would love it if everything man did was zero risk. But no matter what he does there will never be zero risk. We have had fire for centuries yet it is not zero risk.
The only thing is if you blow up and completely level a natural gas electrical generation plant there is little to no risk of the ground being uninhabitable for generations. There is no risk of wind blowing hazardous radiation to other areas.

Man is an inherently risk taking animal. If he were not he would never have done more the eat, sleep and shit. Every time we get on a plane, car or even walk across the street we take risks. We risked many times going into space or going to the moon. We risk many lives every time a submarine leaves port. But as I pointed out if an aircraft fails only those immediately affected are lost. And yes that takes into account anyone hit by it.
If a nuclear reactor fails how many are affected? What would be an acceptable loss? For how many years are we going to hope that the area affected won't be used, traveled or visited?

It depends on the level of failure. Based on US experience with our one accident, the affected area is the reactor itself. For Fukushima the long term impact is the reactor complex itself. Only Chernobyl has had quantifiable long term impacts over a wide area, and even those appear to be mitigating faster than we expected.

I guess you are unfamiliar with the radioactive water leaking from Fukushima.

How much is still leaving the plant? The Wiki article only has a number for 2013, tells about containment procedures, and then doesn't say anything.

No one knows. That is the scary part! The area of leakage is still flooded.

Is it no one knows, or is it the amount getting out to the environment is not something to worry about?

CS-137 is one of the most measured for isotopes out there, and any large concentration would be pretty easy to find and monitor.

If a small amount is getting out into the Ocean, dilution and dispersion might be reducing the signature to background levels within a short distance of the leak source.

That would be great if the radiation was not found along the waters of the west coast of the US.

How long ago? How much above background levels? you do realize that radiation will ALWAYS be found pretty much everywhere, due to things like cosmic rays, decay of naturally occurring radioactive soils/rock, and even the residues of previous atomic tests?

The question is if these values exceed background in sufficent amounts to be harmful.

What we consider less than harmful is often very harmful. My doctor is concerned because of my radiation exposure in the military leading to my current health issues.

Also, since when is Cesium naturally occuring?

CS-137 isn't, but at the same time it isn't some magical isotope that produces super duper radiation different from the natural (and bomb test related) background dosing always going on. If only present in small amounts it can get lost in the natural background dosing we experience every year.

And as for your first statement, there is no concrete evidence either way regarding the effects of low but higher than baseline doses of ionizing radiation over time.

 

[22lcidw]

While it is never acknowledged by the political Left, the American Commercial Nuclear Power industry has the best safety record of any industry in all of human history. Since its inception in the early 1950's there has not been a single radiation-related fatality - or even sickness - in the entire industry. The safety precautions that are mandated and followed in nuclear power stations are SO thorough and SO all-encompassing that the cancer rate for nuclear power employees is lower than for the general population (same for the Nuclear Navy).

You might ask, "What about THREE MILE ISLAND???" Well, what about it? Not a single injury or fatality, not even a mild case of radiation sickness. Nothing. Just a lot of hysteria, largely fueled by the unfortunate coincidence of this relatively insignificant accident with the film, "The China Syndrome."

There is no doubt that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission takes great pride in this accomplishment, and in a sense it should. Many of the precautions that maintain this incredible safety record come directly from that august body.

But the NRC has, in its neurotic enthusiasm, created a situation where a new nuclear power plant is, for all practical purposes, infinitely expensive. Permitting alone can take ten years. Manufacturing and construction are so restrictively managed that they are at least 2-3 times more costly than would be building exactly the same facilities for some other normally-regulated purpose.

I worked in Purchasing for a nuclear power company for a few years, and imagine the cost impact of buying a normal commercial item - say a large industrial valve or pump - for which the warranty will not start for three or four years, and even that date is highly speculative, given the regulatory environment. We were paying 3-5 times the Catalog Price of standard commercial equipment, mainly so that the manufacturer could cover the expected warranty risk.

But this regulatory micro-management is not necessary. Even though the current designs are "new," they are all based on proven designs, and the improvements simply make them safer than the existing plants that have been in service - some of them - for more than thirty years. The latest major innovations render "meltdown" impossible, as the cooling water continues to flow even when the reactor is dormant (but still hot).

Having virtually given up on building a safe, proven nuclear power plant of conventional size, the industry pins its hopes on Small Modular Reactors ("SMR's") which can be pre-manufactured and delivered to a site, and combined with other similar reactors to meet the needs of that utility. Good luck with that.

But it represents the Industry just throwing up its hands and acknowledging that the regulatory framework makes building a nuclear power plant impossible, even though we have the technology to do it in an economically feasible manner - even with natural gas breathing down its figurative neck. The actual cost of nuclear power is microscopic; you are simply controlling a natural phenomenon and siphoning off the heat that it generates.

Mark it well: we have foolishly and neurotically regulated this industry out of existence at a time when "we" claim to need sources of energy that do not generate greenhouse gases.

We have met the enemy and...well, you know the rest.

The biggest problem with nuclear is the waste. You can not go near it for thousands of years. We are leaving a trap for our prodigy. Will they have any idea not to enter an area so full of nuclear waste? We have no idea.

The waste is usually manageable, and what is created per unit power generated is miniscule compared to other waste streams for other power sources. (remember combustion products from fossil fuel power generation is a waste stream).

The key is proper labelling, design of containment, and location of containment. If we get to a point where the labels aren't maintained or understood we are probably looking at a planet of the apes level collapse of civilization anyway.

Look back a couple thousand years what language was spoken here? What language was spoken in Italy? I don't seem to remember a planet of the apes style collapse in my history books.
Perhaps you would be so kind as to point out my lack of education on that matter?
How many cities have been discovered over the last hundred years that were unknown to us? Care to guess that it was more then one? If we can forget the location of even one city than how would it be such a stretch of the imagination to forget the location of even one depository?

They didn't have the level of technological ability we have, both with regards to the storage of, and dissemination of, information. Also you are talking about cities, not intentionally designed isolation facilities for nuclear waste. Waste Depositories would be placed in the middle of nowhere, probably buried deep inside a mountain, then re-enforced with tons of concrete and steel. Access would be limited, and multiple layers of warnings and control methods would be used for any access.

In a few thousand years one would hope anyone "stumbling" into something like this would still have the cognitive ability to recognize warning signs and giant radiation symbols all over the place if they decided to dig into one of these repositories.

So did recognize any of the languages spoken two thousand years ago at first sight? A lot of waste is being stored in an old salt mine. Remember the Washington state spill a few years back. If you really want to learn do a quick search of nuclear waste accidents.

If in 1000 years they are too dumb to ignore the visual warnings, and the fact they have to dig/cut/burn through several containment structures and vessels, i say fuck em.

That's assuming some one never makes a mistake or we don't have a leak into the ground water.

If you create impossible conditions for something you make it impossible. The concept is risk mitigation, not risk elimination.

The idea is to layer the defenses so just one or two mistakes or incidents don't lead to total failure.

If you look at most disasters, one bad thing isn't usually enough, it requires a sequence of bad events for the worst to happen.

Sometimes it isn't just layered defenses.
Love canal comes to mind.
The release of chemical gases in India.
Chernobyl, three mile island. Fukushima.
Numerous leaks of radioactive waste.
We have been lucky. Can we hope that we can continue with luck?
Even if it is not completely man made, nature has shown us that we are not masters of this world no matter what we think.

TMI doesn't belong with the other two, hell even Fukishima doesn't belong with chernobyl.

In all the cases, multiple mistakes had to be made before anything really bad happened.

If you are that afraid of everything I suggest you find some place in the woods and build a concrete cabin with 4 ft thick walls and hide until you die of old age.

The funny thing is you can argue until you are blue in the face but they were all problems at nuclear facilities or man made problems as in love canal.
Lol. Actually I am not afraid of much at all. I understand that you want to believe that you understand things but I think you are going to find out that there are others in the world that will put a halt to nuclear energy.

1 catastrophic accident caused by a shitty design, shitty management, and shitty culture. 1 bad accident caused by a 40 ft tall wall of water and incompetence, and one overblown accident caused by poor operational awareness.

I'll put my engineering degree up against whatever basketweaving education you have any day of the week.

And yet all three of those were nuclear accidents. Unless you want to try and call them home accidents.
So how do you think that the next accident will go? Will we be lucky or unlucky?
Glad to see you are so upset. Do things always upset you when everyone doesn't bow down and fall in line with your way of thinking?

The thing with accidents is you learn from each one. It's why air travel becomes safer every year.

And to me Chernobyl wasn't an accident, it was willful negligence from design to operation.

Ok so what did we learn from Fukushima? Not to build nuclear reactors where they come in contact with nature. There are how many areas that could be hit by nature?

Was it possible to build a wall around the buildings that needed it? The costs would not have been so much.

 

[Maxdeath]

While it is never acknowledged by the political Left, the American Commercial Nuclear Power industry has the best safety record of any industry in all of human history. Since its inception in the early 1950's there has not been a single radiation-related fatality - or even sickness - in the entire industry. The safety precautions that are mandated and followed in nuclear power stations are SO thorough and SO all-encompassing that the cancer rate for nuclear power employees is lower than for the general population (same for the Nuclear Navy).

You might ask, "What about THREE MILE ISLAND???" Well, what about it? Not a single injury or fatality, not even a mild case of radiation sickness. Nothing. Just a lot of hysteria, largely fueled by the unfortunate coincidence of this relatively insignificant accident with the film, "The China Syndrome."

There is no doubt that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission takes great pride in this accomplishment, and in a sense it should. Many of the precautions that maintain this incredible safety record come directly from that august body.

But the NRC has, in its neurotic enthusiasm, created a situation where a new nuclear power plant is, for all practical purposes, infinitely expensive. Permitting alone can take ten years. Manufacturing and construction are so restrictively managed that they are at least 2-3 times more costly than would be building exactly the same facilities for some other normally-regulated purpose.

I worked in Purchasing for a nuclear power company for a few years, and imagine the cost impact of buying a normal commercial item - say a large industrial valve or pump - for which the warranty will not start for three or four years, and even that date is highly speculative, given the regulatory environment. We were paying 3-5 times the Catalog Price of standard commercial equipment, mainly so that the manufacturer could cover the expected warranty risk.

But this regulatory micro-management is not necessary. Even though the current designs are "new," they are all based on proven designs, and the improvements simply make them safer than the existing plants that have been in service - some of them - for more than thirty years. The latest major innovations render "meltdown" impossible, as the cooling water continues to flow even when the reactor is dormant (but still hot).

Having virtually given up on building a safe, proven nuclear power plant of conventional size, the industry pins its hopes on Small Modular Reactors ("SMR's") which can be pre-manufactured and delivered to a site, and combined with other similar reactors to meet the needs of that utility. Good luck with that.

But it represents the Industry just throwing up its hands and acknowledging that the regulatory framework makes building a nuclear power plant impossible, even though we have the technology to do it in an economically feasible manner - even with natural gas breathing down its figurative neck. The actual cost of nuclear power is microscopic; you are simply controlling a natural phenomenon and siphoning off the heat that it generates.

Mark it well: we have foolishly and neurotically regulated this industry out of existence at a time when "we" claim to need sources of energy that do not generate greenhouse gases.

We have met the enemy and...well, you know the rest.

The biggest problem with nuclear is the waste. You can not go near it for thousands of years. We are leaving a trap for our prodigy. Will they have any idea not to enter an area so full of nuclear waste? We have no idea.

The waste is usually manageable, and what is created per unit power generated is miniscule compared to other waste streams for other power sources. (remember combustion products from fossil fuel power generation is a waste stream).

The key is proper labelling, design of containment, and location of containment. If we get to a point where the labels aren't maintained or understood we are probably looking at a planet of the apes level collapse of civilization anyway.

Look back a couple thousand years what language was spoken here? What language was spoken in Italy? I don't seem to remember a planet of the apes style collapse in my history books.
Perhaps you would be so kind as to point out my lack of education on that matter?
How many cities have been discovered over the last hundred years that were unknown to us? Care to guess that it was more then one? If we can forget the location of even one city than how would it be such a stretch of the imagination to forget the location of even one depository?

They didn't have the level of technological ability we have, both with regards to the storage of, and dissemination of, information. Also you are talking about cities, not intentionally designed isolation facilities for nuclear waste. Waste Depositories would be placed in the middle of nowhere, probably buried deep inside a mountain, then re-enforced with tons of concrete and steel. Access would be limited, and multiple layers of warnings and control methods would be used for any access.

In a few thousand years one would hope anyone "stumbling" into something like this would still have the cognitive ability to recognize warning signs and giant radiation symbols all over the place if they decided to dig into one of these repositories.

So did recognize any of the languages spoken two thousand years ago at first sight? A lot of waste is being stored in an old salt mine. Remember the Washington state spill a few years back. If you really want to learn do a quick search of nuclear waste accidents.

If in 1000 years they are too dumb to ignore the visual warnings, and the fact they have to dig/cut/burn through several containment structures and vessels, i say fuck em.

That's assuming some one never makes a mistake or we don't have a leak into the ground water.

If you create impossible conditions for something you make it impossible. The concept is risk mitigation, not risk elimination.

The idea is to layer the defenses so just one or two mistakes or incidents don't lead to total failure.

If you look at most disasters, one bad thing isn't usually enough, it requires a sequence of bad events for the worst to happen.

Sometimes it isn't just layered defenses.
Love canal comes to mind.
The release of chemical gases in India.
Chernobyl, three mile island. Fukushima.
Numerous leaks of radioactive waste.
We have been lucky. Can we hope that we can continue with luck?
Even if it is not completely man made, nature has shown us that we are not masters of this world no matter what we think.

TMI doesn't belong with the other two, hell even Fukishima doesn't belong with chernobyl.

In all the cases, multiple mistakes had to be made before anything really bad happened.

If you are that afraid of everything I suggest you find some place in the woods and build a concrete cabin with 4 ft thick walls and hide until you die of old age.

The funny thing is you can argue until you are blue in the face but they were all problems at nuclear facilities or man made problems as in love canal.
Lol. Actually I am not afraid of much at all. I understand that you want to believe that you understand things but I think you are going to find out that there are others in the world that will put a halt to nuclear energy.

1 catastrophic accident caused by a shitty design, shitty management, and shitty culture. 1 bad accident caused by a 40 ft tall wall of water and incompetence, and one overblown accident caused by poor operational awareness.

I'll put my engineering degree up against whatever basketweaving education you have any day of the week.

And yet all three of those were nuclear accidents. Unless you want to try and call them home accidents.
So how do you think that the next accident will go? Will we be lucky or unlucky?
Glad to see you are so upset. Do things always upset you when everyone doesn't bow down and fall in line with your way of thinking?

The thing with accidents is you learn from each one. It's why air travel becomes safer every year.

And to me Chernobyl wasn't an accident, it was willful negligence from design to operation.

Ok so what did we learn from Fukushima? Not to build nuclear reactors where they come in contact with nature. There are how many areas that could be hit by nature?

Was it possible to build a wall around the buildings that needed it? The costs would not have been so much.

And a wall does what as far as containing radiation? A wall stops an earthquake exactly how? A wall stops a terrorist, it might slow them down.

 

[martybegan]

While it is never acknowledged by the political Left, the American Commercial Nuclear Power industry has the best safety record of any industry in all of human history. Since its inception in the early 1950's there has not been a single radiation-related fatality - or even sickness - in the entire industry. The safety precautions that are mandated and followed in nuclear power stations are SO thorough and SO all-encompassing that the cancer rate for nuclear power employees is lower than for the general population (same for the Nuclear Navy).

You might ask, "What about THREE MILE ISLAND???" Well, what about it? Not a single injury or fatality, not even a mild case of radiation sickness. Nothing. Just a lot of hysteria, largely fueled by the unfortunate coincidence of this relatively insignificant accident with the film, "The China Syndrome."

There is no doubt that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission takes great pride in this accomplishment, and in a sense it should. Many of the precautions that maintain this incredible safety record come directly from that august body.

But the NRC has, in its neurotic enthusiasm, created a situation where a new nuclear power plant is, for all practical purposes, infinitely expensive. Permitting alone can take ten years. Manufacturing and construction are so restrictively managed that they are at least 2-3 times more costly than would be building exactly the same facilities for some other normally-regulated purpose.

I worked in Purchasing for a nuclear power company for a few years, and imagine the cost impact of buying a normal commercial item - say a large industrial valve or pump - for which the warranty will not start for three or four years, and even that date is highly speculative, given the regulatory environment. We were paying 3-5 times the Catalog Price of standard commercial equipment, mainly so that the manufacturer could cover the expected warranty risk.

But this regulatory micro-management is not necessary. Even though the current designs are "new," they are all based on proven designs, and the improvements simply make them safer than the existing plants that have been in service - some of them - for more than thirty years. The latest major innovations render "meltdown" impossible, as the cooling water continues to flow even when the reactor is dormant (but still hot).

Having virtually given up on building a safe, proven nuclear power plant of conventional size, the industry pins its hopes on Small Modular Reactors ("SMR's") which can be pre-manufactured and delivered to a site, and combined with other similar reactors to meet the needs of that utility. Good luck with that.

But it represents the Industry just throwing up its hands and acknowledging that the regulatory framework makes building a nuclear power plant impossible, even though we have the technology to do it in an economically feasible manner - even with natural gas breathing down its figurative neck. The actual cost of nuclear power is microscopic; you are simply controlling a natural phenomenon and siphoning off the heat that it generates.

Mark it well: we have foolishly and neurotically regulated this industry out of existence at a time when "we" claim to need sources of energy that do not generate greenhouse gases.

We have met the enemy and...well, you know the rest.

The biggest problem with nuclear is the waste. You can not go near it for thousands of years. We are leaving a trap for our prodigy. Will they have any idea not to enter an area so full of nuclear waste? We have no idea.

The waste is usually manageable, and what is created per unit power generated is miniscule compared to other waste streams for other power sources. (remember combustion products from fossil fuel power generation is a waste stream).

The key is proper labelling, design of containment, and location of containment. If we get to a point where the labels aren't maintained or understood we are probably looking at a planet of the apes level collapse of civilization anyway.

Look back a couple thousand years what language was spoken here? What language was spoken in Italy? I don't seem to remember a planet of the apes style collapse in my history books.
Perhaps you would be so kind as to point out my lack of education on that matter?
How many cities have been discovered over the last hundred years that were unknown to us? Care to guess that it was more then one? If we can forget the location of even one city than how would it be such a stretch of the imagination to forget the location of even one depository?

They didn't have the level of technological ability we have, both with regards to the storage of, and dissemination of, information. Also you are talking about cities, not intentionally designed isolation facilities for nuclear waste. Waste Depositories would be placed in the middle of nowhere, probably buried deep inside a mountain, then re-enforced with tons of concrete and steel. Access would be limited, and multiple layers of warnings and control methods would be used for any access.

In a few thousand years one would hope anyone "stumbling" into something like this would still have the cognitive ability to recognize warning signs and giant radiation symbols all over the place if they decided to dig into one of these repositories.

So did recognize any of the languages spoken two thousand years ago at first sight? A lot of waste is being stored in an old salt mine. Remember the Washington state spill a few years back. If you really want to learn do a quick search of nuclear waste accidents.

If in 1000 years they are too dumb to ignore the visual warnings, and the fact they have to dig/cut/burn through several containment structures and vessels, i say fuck em.

That's assuming some one never makes a mistake or we don't have a leak into the ground water.

If you create impossible conditions for something you make it impossible. The concept is risk mitigation, not risk elimination.

The idea is to layer the defenses so just one or two mistakes or incidents don't lead to total failure.

If you look at most disasters, one bad thing isn't usually enough, it requires a sequence of bad events for the worst to happen.

Sometimes it isn't just layered defenses.
Love canal comes to mind.
The release of chemical gases in India.
Chernobyl, three mile island. Fukushima.
Numerous leaks of radioactive waste.
We have been lucky. Can we hope that we can continue with luck?
Even if it is not completely man made, nature has shown us that we are not masters of this world no matter what we think.

TMI doesn't belong with the other two, hell even Fukishima doesn't belong with chernobyl.

In all the cases, multiple mistakes had to be made before anything really bad happened.

If you are that afraid of everything I suggest you find some place in the woods and build a concrete cabin with 4 ft thick walls and hide until you die of old age.

The funny thing is you can argue until you are blue in the face but they were all problems at nuclear facilities or man made problems as in love canal.
Lol. Actually I am not afraid of much at all. I understand that you want to believe that you understand things but I think you are going to find out that there are others in the world that will put a halt to nuclear energy.

1 catastrophic accident caused by a shitty design, shitty management, and shitty culture. 1 bad accident caused by a 40 ft tall wall of water and incompetence, and one overblown accident caused by poor operational awareness.

I'll put my engineering degree up against whatever basketweaving education you have any day of the week.

And yet all three of those were nuclear accidents. Unless you want to try and call them home accidents.
So how do you think that the next accident will go? Will we be lucky or unlucky?
Glad to see you are so upset. Do things always upset you when everyone doesn't bow down and fall in line with your way of thinking?

The thing with accidents is you learn from each one. It's why air travel becomes safer every year.

And to me Chernobyl wasn't an accident, it was willful negligence from design to operation.

Ok so what did we learn from Fukushima? Not to build nuclear reactors where they come in contact with nature. There are how many areas that could be hit by nature?

Was it possible to build a wall around the buildings that needed it? The costs would not have been so much.

They had a seawall around the facility, it just wasn't big enough. The design was for a 20ft Tsunami and they got a 40ft tsunami.

Another facility had a wall that protected itself adequately.

 

[Maxdeath]

While it is never acknowledged by the political Left, the American Commercial Nuclear Power industry has the best safety record of any industry in all of human history. Since its inception in the early 1950's there has not been a single radiation-related fatality - or even sickness - in the entire industry. The safety precautions that are mandated and followed in nuclear power stations are SO thorough and SO all-encompassing that the cancer rate for nuclear power employees is lower than for the general population (same for the Nuclear Navy).

You might ask, "What about THREE MILE ISLAND???" Well, what about it? Not a single injury or fatality, not even a mild case of radiation sickness. Nothing. Just a lot of hysteria, largely fueled by the unfortunate coincidence of this relatively insignificant accident with the film, "The China Syndrome."

There is no doubt that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission takes great pride in this accomplishment, and in a sense it should. Many of the precautions that maintain this incredible safety record come directly from that august body.

But the NRC has, in its neurotic enthusiasm, created a situation where a new nuclear power plant is, for all practical purposes, infinitely expensive. Permitting alone can take ten years. Manufacturing and construction are so restrictively managed that they are at least 2-3 times more costly than would be building exactly the same facilities for some other normally-regulated purpose.

I worked in Purchasing for a nuclear power company for a few years, and imagine the cost impact of buying a normal commercial item - say a large industrial valve or pump - for which the warranty will not start for three or four years, and even that date is highly speculative, given the regulatory environment. We were paying 3-5 times the Catalog Price of standard commercial equipment, mainly so that the manufacturer could cover the expected warranty risk.

But this regulatory micro-management is not necessary. Even though the current designs are "new," they are all based on proven designs, and the improvements simply make them safer than the existing plants that have been in service - some of them - for more than thirty years. The latest major innovations render "meltdown" impossible, as the cooling water continues to flow even when the reactor is dormant (but still hot).

Having virtually given up on building a safe, proven nuclear power plant of conventional size, the industry pins its hopes on Small Modular Reactors ("SMR's") which can be pre-manufactured and delivered to a site, and combined with other similar reactors to meet the needs of that utility. Good luck with that.

But it represents the Industry just throwing up its hands and acknowledging that the regulatory framework makes building a nuclear power plant impossible, even though we have the technology to do it in an economically feasible manner - even with natural gas breathing down its figurative neck. The actual cost of nuclear power is microscopic; you are simply controlling a natural phenomenon and siphoning off the heat that it generates.

Mark it well: we have foolishly and neurotically regulated this industry out of existence at a time when "we" claim to need sources of energy that do not generate greenhouse gases.

We have met the enemy and...well, you know the rest.

The biggest problem with nuclear is the waste. You can not go near it for thousands of years. We are leaving a trap for our prodigy. Will they have any idea not to enter an area so full of nuclear waste? We have no idea.

The waste is usually manageable, and what is created per unit power generated is miniscule compared to other waste streams for other power sources. (remember combustion products from fossil fuel power generation is a waste stream).

The key is proper labelling, design of containment, and location of containment. If we get to a point where the labels aren't maintained or understood we are probably looking at a planet of the apes level collapse of civilization anyway.

Look back a couple thousand years what language was spoken here? What language was spoken in Italy? I don't seem to remember a planet of the apes style collapse in my history books.
Perhaps you would be so kind as to point out my lack of education on that matter?
How many cities have been discovered over the last hundred years that were unknown to us? Care to guess that it was more then one? If we can forget the location of even one city than how would it be such a stretch of the imagination to forget the location of even one depository?

They didn't have the level of technological ability we have, both with regards to the storage of, and dissemination of, information. Also you are talking about cities, not intentionally designed isolation facilities for nuclear waste. Waste Depositories would be placed in the middle of nowhere, probably buried deep inside a mountain, then re-enforced with tons of concrete and steel. Access would be limited, and multiple layers of warnings and control methods would be used for any access.

In a few thousand years one would hope anyone "stumbling" into something like this would still have the cognitive ability to recognize warning signs and giant radiation symbols all over the place if they decided to dig into one of these repositories.

So did recognize any of the languages spoken two thousand years ago at first sight? A lot of waste is being stored in an old salt mine. Remember the Washington state spill a few years back. If you really want to learn do a quick search of nuclear waste accidents.

If in 1000 years they are too dumb to ignore the visual warnings, and the fact they have to dig/cut/burn through several containment structures and vessels, i say fuck em.

That's assuming some one never makes a mistake or we don't have a leak into the ground water.

If you create impossible conditions for something you make it impossible. The concept is risk mitigation, not risk elimination.

The idea is to layer the defenses so just one or two mistakes or incidents don't lead to total failure.

If you look at most disasters, one bad thing isn't usually enough, it requires a sequence of bad events for the worst to happen.

Sometimes it isn't just layered defenses.
Love canal comes to mind.
The release of chemical gases in India.
Chernobyl, three mile island. Fukushima.
Numerous leaks of radioactive waste.
We have been lucky. Can we hope that we can continue with luck?
Even if it is not completely man made, nature has shown us that we are not masters of this world no matter what we think.

TMI doesn't belong with the other two, hell even Fukishima doesn't belong with chernobyl.

In all the cases, multiple mistakes had to be made before anything really bad happened.

If you are that afraid of everything I suggest you find some place in the woods and build a concrete cabin with 4 ft thick walls and hide until you die of old age.

The funny thing is you can argue until you are blue in the face but they were all problems at nuclear facilities or man made problems as in love canal.
Lol. Actually I am not afraid of much at all. I understand that you want to believe that you understand things but I think you are going to find out that there are others in the world that will put a halt to nuclear energy.

1 catastrophic accident caused by a shitty design, shitty management, and shitty culture. 1 bad accident caused by a 40 ft tall wall of water and incompetence, and one overblown accident caused by poor operational awareness.

I'll put my engineering degree up against whatever basketweaving education you have any day of the week.

And yet all three of those were nuclear accidents. Unless you want to try and call them home accidents.
So how do you think that the next accident will go? Will we be lucky or unlucky?
Glad to see you are so upset. Do things always upset you when everyone doesn't bow down and fall in line with your way of thinking?

The thing with accidents is you learn from each one. It's why air travel becomes safer every year.

And to me Chernobyl wasn't an accident, it was willful negligence from design to operation.

Ok so what did we learn from Fukushima? Not to build nuclear reactors where they come in contact with nature. There are how many areas that could be hit by nature?

Place your emergency generators somewhere where they can't be flooded out. Place the fuel for them likewise. Increase your emergency fuel supply.

We also learned that a containment structure will keep most of the core material in place.

Place them where they can't be flooded out. On top of a mountain?
Yes indeed most of the core material. Got to love the most part of that. In other words loss of some is acceptable.

Or build a better sea-wall, another plant in Japan had a bigger one and came out just fine.

The containment worked for the most part, as opposed to no containment at Chernobyl. The only hotspot really remaining at Fukushima is the plant itself, similar to TMI, but larger in scope.

So we just need to fiqure out how to build something that nature can't tear down. Right... Again for the most part. So of course after two or three thousand years both will be safe.
We don't need to worry. We just need to build things that nature or man can't get into or destroy. Then if we don't we can be very happy and celebrate that only a potion of the core material is gone. Because only a portion is now considered acceptable. Then all we have to do is again try to build something that can withstand nature and humans for two or three thousand years.

Do you remember what was said about doing the same thing over and over again?

So The Nuclear Industry is the only one you want to apply a Zero Risk principle towards, while other energy generation methods are allowed a lesser standard?

No I would love it if everything man did was zero risk. But no matter what he does there will never be zero risk. We have had fire for centuries yet it is not zero risk.
The only thing is if you blow up and completely level a natural gas electrical generation plant there is little to no risk of the ground being uninhabitable for generations. There is no risk of wind blowing hazardous radiation to other areas.

Man is an inherently risk taking animal. If he were not he would never have done more the eat, sleep and shit. Every time we get on a plane, car or even walk across the street we take risks. We risked many times going into space or going to the moon. We risk many lives every time a submarine leaves port. But as I pointed out if an aircraft fails only those immediately affected are lost. And yes that takes into account anyone hit by it.
If a nuclear reactor fails how many are affected? What would be an acceptable loss? For how many years are we going to hope that the area affected won't be used, traveled or visited?

It depends on the level of failure. Based on US experience with our one accident, the affected area is the reactor itself. For Fukushima the long term impact is the reactor complex itself. Only Chernobyl has had quantifiable long term impacts over a wide area, and even those appear to be mitigating faster than we expected.

So we are always going to have success. There will never be a natural or man made disaster? No foreign or domestic terrorism successful cause of catastrophic failure?
I have no doubt that the Titanic, Apollo 13 and others felt the same way. No chance that anything could go wrong. I have no doubt that the most of the people that boarded and flew the planes that hit the World Trade Center felt that there was nothing that could go wrong.

The simple matter is things do go wrong. Hiding from that fact or trying to gloss over it does not make it go away.

After Titanic did we stop using Ocean Liners?

After Apollo 13 we never went into space again?

Where did I say things never go wrong? You are the one trying to apply a zero risk standard to one particular thing you don't like while being evasive about it.

No I am just being realistic you are claiming we have had three problems which were no big deal.
Here is a list of known problems. List of nuclear and radiation accidents by death toll - Wikipedia
I really want to know what do you consider acceptable losses just to have nuclear reactors? Where do we say that it might be too dangerous? When a whole area is uninhabitable.?
You do realize that Chernobyl is not the only reactor based on that design?

 

[candycorn]

While it is never acknowledged by the political Left, the American Commercial Nuclear Power industry has the best safety record of any industry in all of human history. Since its inception in the early 1950's there has not been a single radiation-related fatality - or even sickness - in the entire industry. The safety precautions that are mandated and followed in nuclear power stations are SO thorough and SO all-encompassing that the cancer rate for nuclear power employees is lower than for the general population (same for the Nuclear Navy).

You might ask, "What about THREE MILE ISLAND???" Well, what about it? Not a single injury or fatality, not even a mild case of radiation sickness. Nothing. Just a lot of hysteria, largely fueled by the unfortunate coincidence of this relatively insignificant accident with the film, "The China Syndrome."

There is no doubt that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission takes great pride in this accomplishment, and in a sense it should. Many of the precautions that maintain this incredible safety record come directly from that august body.

But the NRC has, in its neurotic enthusiasm, created a situation where a new nuclear power plant is, for all practical purposes, infinitely expensive. Permitting alone can take ten years. Manufacturing and construction are so restrictively managed that they are at least 2-3 times more costly than would be building exactly the same facilities for some other normally-regulated purpose.

I worked in Purchasing for a nuclear power company for a few years, and imagine the cost impact of buying a normal commercial item - say a large industrial valve or pump - for which the warranty will not start for three or four years, and even that date is highly speculative, given the regulatory environment. We were paying 3-5 times the Catalog Price of standard commercial equipment, mainly so that the manufacturer could cover the expected warranty risk.

But this regulatory micro-management is not necessary. Even though the current designs are "new," they are all based on proven designs, and the improvements simply make them safer than the existing plants that have been in service - some of them - for more than thirty years. The latest major innovations render "meltdown" impossible, as the cooling water continues to flow even when the reactor is dormant (but still hot).

Having virtually given up on building a safe, proven nuclear power plant of conventional size, the industry pins its hopes on Small Modular Reactors ("SMR's") which can be pre-manufactured and delivered to a site, and combined with other similar reactors to meet the needs of that utility. Good luck with that.

But it represents the Industry just throwing up its hands and acknowledging that the regulatory framework makes building a nuclear power plant impossible, even though we have the technology to do it in an economically feasible manner - even with natural gas breathing down its figurative neck. The actual cost of nuclear power is microscopic; you are simply controlling a natural phenomenon and siphoning off the heat that it generates.

Mark it well: we have foolishly and neurotically regulated this industry out of existence at a time when "we" claim to need sources of energy that do not generate greenhouse gases.

We have met the enemy and...well, you know the rest.

Agreed.

They've been in the navy for about 60 years now with an excellent safety record in very hazardous conditions. However that is due to the stringent safeguards and training that Navy personnel undergo. So I say relax the regulations but have the Navy manage the plants that get built. They've proven they can do it as well as can be expected.

 

[DGS49]

The "problem" of nuclear waste (spent fuel) is self-imposed and largely political. Spent fuel can be reprocessed and re-used indefinitely. We have CHOSEN, for political reasons not to re-process spent fuel, because the process can also be used to produce weapons-grade material (as the Iranians are currently doing - or threatening to do).

Nobody will ever build a nuclear power plant in an active seismic zone again.

Nuclear waste can safely be stored "forever" in underground salt deposits such as WIPP. Last I checked, WIPP was closed to additional storage due a "marx brothers" type episode due to storage of materials in the wrong type of kitty litter. (which spontaneously combusts).

We are all aware - are we not? - that we are all surrounded by nuclear radiation ALL THE TIME, more in airplanes, more in certain geographical areas, etc. As with all poisons (1) it's completely harmless until it isn't, (2) it may be beneficial at certain levels, and (3) too much will kill you.

 

[Silver Cat]

While it is never acknowledged by the political Left, the American Commercial Nuclear Power industry has the best safety record of any industry in all of human history. Since its inception in the early 1950's there has not been a single radiation-related fatality - or even sickness - in the entire industry. The safety precautions that are mandated and followed in nuclear power stations are SO thorough and SO all-encompassing that the cancer rate for nuclear power employees is lower than for the general population (same for the Nuclear Navy).

You might ask, "What about THREE MILE ISLAND???" Well, what about it? Not a single injury or fatality, not even a mild case of radiation sickness. Nothing. Just a lot of hysteria, largely fueled by the unfortunate coincidence of this relatively insignificant accident with the film, "The China Syndrome."

There is no doubt that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission takes great pride in this accomplishment, and in a sense it should. Many of the precautions that maintain this incredible safety record come directly from that august body.

But the NRC has, in its neurotic enthusiasm, created a situation where a new nuclear power plant is, for all practical purposes, infinitely expensive. Permitting alone can take ten years. Manufacturing and construction are so restrictively managed that they are at least 2-3 times more costly than would be building exactly the same facilities for some other normally-regulated purpose.

I worked in Purchasing for a nuclear power company for a few years, and imagine the cost impact of buying a normal commercial item - say a large industrial valve or pump - for which the warranty will not start for three or four years, and even that date is highly speculative, given the regulatory environment. We were paying 3-5 times the Catalog Price of standard commercial equipment, mainly so that the manufacturer could cover the expected warranty risk.

But this regulatory micro-management is not necessary. Even though the current designs are "new," they are all based on proven designs, and the improvements simply make them safer than the existing plants that have been in service - some of them - for more than thirty years. The latest major innovations render "meltdown" impossible, as the cooling water continues to flow even when the reactor is dormant (but still hot).

Having virtually given up on building a safe, proven nuclear power plant of conventional size, the industry pins its hopes on Small Modular Reactors ("SMR's") which can be pre-manufactured and delivered to a site, and combined with other similar reactors to meet the needs of that utility. Good luck with that.

But it represents the Industry just throwing up its hands and acknowledging that the regulatory framework makes building a nuclear power plant impossible, even though we have the technology to do it in an economically feasible manner - even with natural gas breathing down its figurative neck. The actual cost of nuclear power is microscopic; you are simply controlling a natural phenomenon and siphoning off the heat that it generates.

Mark it well: we have foolishly and neurotically regulated this industry out of existence at a time when "we" claim to need sources of energy that do not generate greenhouse gases.

We have met the enemy and...well, you know the rest.

The biggest problem with nuclear is the waste. You can not go near it for thousands of years. We are leaving a trap for our prodigy. Will they have any idea not to enter an area so full of nuclear waste? We have no idea.

The waste is usually manageable, and what is created per unit power generated is miniscule compared to other waste streams for other power sources. (remember combustion products from fossil fuel power generation is a waste stream).

The key is proper labelling, design of containment, and location of containment. If we get to a point where the labels aren't maintained or understood we are probably looking at a planet of the apes level collapse of civilization anyway.

Look back a couple thousand years what language was spoken here? What language was spoken in Italy? I don't seem to remember a planet of the apes style collapse in my history books.
Perhaps you would be so kind as to point out my lack of education on that matter?
How many cities have been discovered over the last hundred years that were unknown to us? Care to guess that it was more then one? If we can forget the location of even one city than how would it be such a stretch of the imagination to forget the location of even one depository?

They didn't have the level of technological ability we have, both with regards to the storage of, and dissemination of, information. Also you are talking about cities, not intentionally designed isolation facilities for nuclear waste. Waste Depositories would be placed in the middle of nowhere, probably buried deep inside a mountain, then re-enforced with tons of concrete and steel. Access would be limited, and multiple layers of warnings and control methods would be used for any access.

In a few thousand years one would hope anyone "stumbling" into something like this would still have the cognitive ability to recognize warning signs and giant radiation symbols all over the place if they decided to dig into one of these repositories.

So did recognize any of the languages spoken two thousand years ago at first sight? A lot of waste is being stored in an old salt mine. Remember the Washington state spill a few years back. If you really want to learn do a quick search of nuclear waste accidents.

If in 1000 years they are too dumb to ignore the visual warnings, and the fact they have to dig/cut/burn through several containment structures and vessels, i say fuck em.

That's assuming some one never makes a mistake or we don't have a leak into the ground water.

If you create impossible conditions for something you make it impossible. The concept is risk mitigation, not risk elimination.

The idea is to layer the defenses so just one or two mistakes or incidents don't lead to total failure.

If you look at most disasters, one bad thing isn't usually enough, it requires a sequence of bad events for the worst to happen.

Sometimes it isn't just layered defenses.
Love canal comes to mind.
The release of chemical gases in India.
Chernobyl, three mile island. Fukushima.
Numerous leaks of radioactive waste.
We have been lucky. Can we hope that we can continue with luck?
Even if it is not completely man made, nature has shown us that we are not masters of this world no matter what we think.

TMI doesn't belong with the other two, hell even Fukishima doesn't belong with chernobyl.

In all the cases, multiple mistakes had to be made before anything really bad happened.

If you are that afraid of everything I suggest you find some place in the woods and build a concrete cabin with 4 ft thick walls and hide until you die of old age.

The funny thing is you can argue until you are blue in the face but they were all problems at nuclear facilities or man made problems as in love canal.
Lol. Actually I am not afraid of much at all. I understand that you want to believe that you understand things but I think you are going to find out that there are others in the world that will put a halt to nuclear energy.

1 catastrophic accident caused by a shitty design, shitty management, and shitty culture. 1 bad accident caused by a 40 ft tall wall of water and incompetence, and one overblown accident caused by poor operational awareness.

I'll put my engineering degree up against whatever basketweaving education you have any day of the week.

And yet all three of those were nuclear accidents. Unless you want to try and call them home accidents.

Thats what we call "risk management". Chernobyl is at the one of the last places in the list of Ukrainian problems.
So if we have a choice - to raise nuclear industry, be wealthy and powerful, and have one another accident; or to be powerless and poor, lost Alaska but live in the "green" environment - what would you choose?

 

[Silver Cat]

While it is never acknowledged by the political Left, the American Commercial Nuclear Power industry has the best safety record of any industry in all of human history. Since its inception in the early 1950's there has not been a single radiation-related fatality - or even sickness - in the entire industry. The safety precautions that are mandated and followed in nuclear power stations are SO thorough and SO all-encompassing that the cancer rate for nuclear power employees is lower than for the general population (same for the Nuclear Navy).

You might ask, "What about THREE MILE ISLAND???" Well, what about it? Not a single injury or fatality, not even a mild case of radiation sickness. Nothing. Just a lot of hysteria, largely fueled by the unfortunate coincidence of this relatively insignificant accident with the film, "The China Syndrome."

There is no doubt that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission takes great pride in this accomplishment, and in a sense it should. Many of the precautions that maintain this incredible safety record come directly from that august body.

But the NRC has, in its neurotic enthusiasm, created a situation where a new nuclear power plant is, for all practical purposes, infinitely expensive. Permitting alone can take ten years. Manufacturing and construction are so restrictively managed that they are at least 2-3 times more costly than would be building exactly the same facilities for some other normally-regulated purpose.

I worked in Purchasing for a nuclear power company for a few years, and imagine the cost impact of buying a normal commercial item - say a large industrial valve or pump - for which the warranty will not start for three or four years, and even that date is highly speculative, given the regulatory environment. We were paying 3-5 times the Catalog Price of standard commercial equipment, mainly so that the manufacturer could cover the expected warranty risk.

But this regulatory micro-management is not necessary. Even though the current designs are "new," they are all based on proven designs, and the improvements simply make them safer than the existing plants that have been in service - some of them - for more than thirty years. The latest major innovations render "meltdown" impossible, as the cooling water continues to flow even when the reactor is dormant (but still hot).

Having virtually given up on building a safe, proven nuclear power plant of conventional size, the industry pins its hopes on Small Modular Reactors ("SMR's") which can be pre-manufactured and delivered to a site, and combined with other similar reactors to meet the needs of that utility. Good luck with that.

But it represents the Industry just throwing up its hands and acknowledging that the regulatory framework makes building a nuclear power plant impossible, even though we have the technology to do it in an economically feasible manner - even with natural gas breathing down its figurative neck. The actual cost of nuclear power is microscopic; you are simply controlling a natural phenomenon and siphoning off the heat that it generates.

Mark it well: we have foolishly and neurotically regulated this industry out of existence at a time when "we" claim to need sources of energy that do not generate greenhouse gases.

We have met the enemy and...well, you know the rest.

The biggest problem with nuclear is the waste. You can not go near it for thousands of years. We are leaving a trap for our prodigy. Will they have any idea not to enter an area so full of nuclear waste? We have no idea.

The waste is usually manageable, and what is created per unit power generated is miniscule compared to other waste streams for other power sources. (remember combustion products from fossil fuel power generation is a waste stream).

The key is proper labelling, design of containment, and location of containment. If we get to a point where the labels aren't maintained or understood we are probably looking at a planet of the apes level collapse of civilization anyway.

Look back a couple thousand years what language was spoken here? What language was spoken in Italy? I don't seem to remember a planet of the apes style collapse in my history books.
Perhaps you would be so kind as to point out my lack of education on that matter?
How many cities have been discovered over the last hundred years that were unknown to us? Care to guess that it was more then one? If we can forget the location of even one city than how would it be such a stretch of the imagination to forget the location of even one depository?

They didn't have the level of technological ability we have, both with regards to the storage of, and dissemination of, information. Also you are talking about cities, not intentionally designed isolation facilities for nuclear waste. Waste Depositories would be placed in the middle of nowhere, probably buried deep inside a mountain, then re-enforced with tons of concrete and steel. Access would be limited, and multiple layers of warnings and control methods would be used for any access.

In a few thousand years one would hope anyone "stumbling" into something like this would still have the cognitive ability to recognize warning signs and giant radiation symbols all over the place if they decided to dig into one of these repositories.

So did recognize any of the languages spoken two thousand years ago at first sight? A lot of waste is being stored in an old salt mine. Remember the Washington state spill a few years back. If you really want to learn do a quick search of nuclear waste accidents.

If in 1000 years they are too dumb to ignore the visual warnings, and the fact they have to dig/cut/burn through several containment structures and vessels, i say fuck em.

That's assuming some one never makes a mistake or we don't have a leak into the ground water.

If you create impossible conditions for something you make it impossible. The concept is risk mitigation, not risk elimination.

The idea is to layer the defenses so just one or two mistakes or incidents don't lead to total failure.

If you look at most disasters, one bad thing isn't usually enough, it requires a sequence of bad events for the worst to happen.

Sometimes it isn't just layered defenses.
Love canal comes to mind.
The release of chemical gases in India.
Chernobyl, three mile island. Fukushima.
Numerous leaks of radioactive waste.
We have been lucky. Can we hope that we can continue with luck?
Even if it is not completely man made, nature has shown us that we are not masters of this world no matter what we think.

TMI doesn't belong with the other two, hell even Fukishima doesn't belong with chernobyl.

In all the cases, multiple mistakes had to be made before anything really bad happened.

If you are that afraid of everything I suggest you find some place in the woods and build a concrete cabin with 4 ft thick walls and hide until you die of old age.

The funny thing is you can argue until you are blue in the face but they were all problems at nuclear facilities or man made problems as in love canal.
Lol. Actually I am not afraid of much at all. I understand that you want to believe that you understand things but I think you are going to find out that there are others in the world that will put a halt to nuclear energy.

1 catastrophic accident caused by a shitty design, shitty management, and shitty culture. 1 bad accident caused by a 40 ft tall wall of water and incompetence, and one overblown accident caused by poor operational awareness.

I'll put my engineering degree up against whatever basketweaving education you have any day of the week.

And yet all three of those were nuclear accidents. Unless you want to try and call them home accidents.
So how do you think that the next accident will go? Will we be lucky or unlucky?
Glad to see you are so upset. Do things always upset you when everyone doesn't bow down and fall in line with your way of thinking?

The thing with accidents is you learn from each one. It's why air travel becomes safer every year.

And to me Chernobyl wasn't an accident, it was willful negligence from design to operation.

Ok so what did we learn from Fukushima? Not to build nuclear reactors where they come in contact with nature. There are how many areas that could be hit by nature?

Place your emergency generators somewhere where they can't be flooded out. Place the fuel for them likewise. Increase your emergency fuel supply.

We also learned that a containment structure will keep most of the core material in place.

Place them where they can't be flooded out. On top of a mountain?
Yes indeed most of the core material. Got to love the most part of that. In other words loss of some is acceptable.

Or build a better sea-wall, another plant in Japan had a bigger one and came out just fine.

The containment worked for the most part, as opposed to no containment at Chernobyl. The only hotspot really remaining at Fukushima is the plant itself, similar to TMI, but larger in scope.

So we just need to fiqure out how to build something that nature can't tear down. Right... Again for the most part. So of course after two or three thousand years both will be safe.
We don't need to worry. We just need to build things that nature or man can't get into or destroy. Then if we don't we can be very happy and celebrate that only a potion of the core material is gone. Because only a portion is now considered acceptable. Then all we have to do is again try to build something that can withstand nature and humans for two or three thousand years.

Do you remember what was said about doing the same thing over and over again?

So The Nuclear Industry is the only one you want to apply a Zero Risk principle towards, while other energy generation methods are allowed a lesser standard?

No I would love it if everything man did was zero risk. But no matter what he does there will never be zero risk. We have had fire for centuries yet it is not zero risk.
The only thing is if you blow up and completely level a natural gas electrical generation plant there is little to no risk of the ground being uninhabitable for generations. There is no risk of wind blowing hazardous radiation to other areas.

Man is an inherently risk taking animal. If he were not he would never have done more the eat, sleep and shit. Every time we get on a plane, car or even walk across the street we take risks. We risked many times going into space or going to the moon. We risk many lives every time a submarine leaves port. But as I pointed out if an aircraft fails only those immediately affected are lost. And yes that takes into account anyone hit by it.
If a nuclear reactor fails how many are affected? What would be an acceptable loss? For how many years are we going to hope that the area affected won't be used, traveled or visited?

It depends on the level of failure. Based on US experience with our one accident, the affected area is the reactor itself. For Fukushima the long term impact is the reactor complex itself. Only Chernobyl has had quantifiable long term impacts over a wide area, and even those appear to be mitigating faster than we expected.

So we are always going to have success. There will never be a natural or man made disaster? No foreign or domestic terrorism successful cause of catastrophic failure?
I have no doubt that the Titanic, Apollo 13 and others felt the same way. No chance that anything could go wrong. I have no doubt that the most of the people that boarded and flew the planes that hit the World Trade Center felt that there was nothing that could go wrong.

The simple matter is things do go wrong. Hiding from that fact or trying to gloss over it does not make it go away.

Things can really go wrong. For example, Russians can invade Alaska. No nuclear power means no military industry, no military power means the possibility of the foreign invasion.

 

[HenryBHough]

We wouldn't need nearly so much power if all the liberal trolls on this board just kept their rants to maximum two (2, liberals) lines.

 

[Maxdeath]

While it is never acknowledged by the political Left, the American Commercial Nuclear Power industry has the best safety record of any industry in all of human history. Since its inception in the early 1950's there has not been a single radiation-related fatality - or even sickness - in the entire industry. The safety precautions that are mandated and followed in nuclear power stations are SO thorough and SO all-encompassing that the cancer rate for nuclear power employees is lower than for the general population (same for the Nuclear Navy).

You might ask, "What about THREE MILE ISLAND???" Well, what about it? Not a single injury or fatality, not even a mild case of radiation sickness. Nothing. Just a lot of hysteria, largely fueled by the unfortunate coincidence of this relatively insignificant accident with the film, "The China Syndrome."

There is no doubt that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission takes great pride in this accomplishment, and in a sense it should. Many of the precautions that maintain this incredible safety record come directly from that august body.

But the NRC has, in its neurotic enthusiasm, created a situation where a new nuclear power plant is, for all practical purposes, infinitely expensive. Permitting alone can take ten years. Manufacturing and construction are so restrictively managed that they are at least 2-3 times more costly than would be building exactly the same facilities for some other normally-regulated purpose.

I worked in Purchasing for a nuclear power company for a few years, and imagine the cost impact of buying a normal commercial item - say a large industrial valve or pump - for which the warranty will not start for three or four years, and even that date is highly speculative, given the regulatory environment. We were paying 3-5 times the Catalog Price of standard commercial equipment, mainly so that the manufacturer could cover the expected warranty risk.

But this regulatory micro-management is not necessary. Even though the current designs are "new," they are all based on proven designs, and the improvements simply make them safer than the existing plants that have been in service - some of them - for more than thirty years. The latest major innovations render "meltdown" impossible, as the cooling water continues to flow even when the reactor is dormant (but still hot).

Having virtually given up on building a safe, proven nuclear power plant of conventional size, the industry pins its hopes on Small Modular Reactors ("SMR's") which can be pre-manufactured and delivered to a site, and combined with other similar reactors to meet the needs of that utility. Good luck with that.

But it represents the Industry just throwing up its hands and acknowledging that the regulatory framework makes building a nuclear power plant impossible, even though we have the technology to do it in an economically feasible manner - even with natural gas breathing down its figurative neck. The actual cost of nuclear power is microscopic; you are simply controlling a natural phenomenon and siphoning off the heat that it generates.

Mark it well: we have foolishly and neurotically regulated this industry out of existence at a time when "we" claim to need sources of energy that do not generate greenhouse gases.

We have met the enemy and...well, you know the rest.

The biggest problem with nuclear is the waste. You can not go near it for thousands of years. We are leaving a trap for our prodigy. Will they have any idea not to enter an area so full of nuclear waste? We have no idea.

The waste is usually manageable, and what is created per unit power generated is miniscule compared to other waste streams for other power sources. (remember combustion products from fossil fuel power generation is a waste stream).

The key is proper labelling, design of containment, and location of containment. If we get to a point where the labels aren't maintained or understood we are probably looking at a planet of the apes level collapse of civilization anyway.

Look back a couple thousand years what language was spoken here? What language was spoken in Italy? I don't seem to remember a planet of the apes style collapse in my history books.
Perhaps you would be so kind as to point out my lack of education on that matter?
How many cities have been discovered over the last hundred years that were unknown to us? Care to guess that it was more then one? If we can forget the location of even one city than how would it be such a stretch of the imagination to forget the location of even one depository?

They didn't have the level of technological ability we have, both with regards to the storage of, and dissemination of, information. Also you are talking about cities, not intentionally designed isolation facilities for nuclear waste. Waste Depositories would be placed in the middle of nowhere, probably buried deep inside a mountain, then re-enforced with tons of concrete and steel. Access would be limited, and multiple layers of warnings and control methods would be used for any access.

In a few thousand years one would hope anyone "stumbling" into something like this would still have the cognitive ability to recognize warning signs and giant radiation symbols all over the place if they decided to dig into one of these repositories.

So did recognize any of the languages spoken two thousand years ago at first sight? A lot of waste is being stored in an old salt mine. Remember the Washington state spill a few years back. If you really want to learn do a quick search of nuclear waste accidents.

If in 1000 years they are too dumb to ignore the visual warnings, and the fact they have to dig/cut/burn through several containment structures and vessels, i say fuck em.

That's assuming some one never makes a mistake or we don't have a leak into the ground water.

If you create impossible conditions for something you make it impossible. The concept is risk mitigation, not risk elimination.

The idea is to layer the defenses so just one or two mistakes or incidents don't lead to total failure.

If you look at most disasters, one bad thing isn't usually enough, it requires a sequence of bad events for the worst to happen.

Sometimes it isn't just layered defenses.
Love canal comes to mind.
The release of chemical gases in India.
Chernobyl, three mile island. Fukushima.
Numerous leaks of radioactive waste.
We have been lucky. Can we hope that we can continue with luck?
Even if it is not completely man made, nature has shown us that we are not masters of this world no matter what we think.

TMI doesn't belong with the other two, hell even Fukishima doesn't belong with chernobyl.

In all the cases, multiple mistakes had to be made before anything really bad happened.

If you are that afraid of everything I suggest you find some place in the woods and build a concrete cabin with 4 ft thick walls and hide until you die of old age.

The funny thing is you can argue until you are blue in the face but they were all problems at nuclear facilities or man made problems as in love canal.
Lol. Actually I am not afraid of much at all. I understand that you want to believe that you understand things but I think you are going to find out that there are others in the world that will put a halt to nuclear energy.

1 catastrophic accident caused by a shitty design, shitty management, and shitty culture. 1 bad accident caused by a 40 ft tall wall of water and incompetence, and one overblown accident caused by poor operational awareness.

I'll put my engineering degree up against whatever basketweaving education you have any day of the week.

And yet all three of those were nuclear accidents. Unless you want to try and call them home accidents.

Thats what we call "risk management". Chernobyl is at the one of the last places in the list of Ukrainian problems.
So if we have a choice - to raise nuclear industry, be wealthy and powerful, and have one another accident; or to be powerless and poor, lost Alaska but live in the "green" environment - what would you choose?

So give me an exact number of lives that your " risk management " is willing to sacrifice. A hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand, a million? Give me a number.