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

[Andylusion]

Domestic Uranium Production Report - Quarterly -

www.eia.gov

View attachment 337149
We really need some kind of deregulation and the invisible hand of the market.

Exactly. I would support a nearly full deregulation, plus incentives for alternative nuclear power system.

Thorium would be a fantastic, safer alternative to PWR or BWR. Moreover, we should immediately build and run a MOX reactor, and start reprocessing spent fuel rods, to be reused in existing reactors.

Most estimates suggest we could re-use over 90% of existing spent fuel rods. Logically this means reducing our actual waste products by existing reactors by as much.

This isn't even a leap of technology. France and Russia have been reprocessing their spent fuel rods for decades. The only reason we don't, is because that mindless left-wing fool Carter, banned reprocessing spent fuel, because "it could lead to nuclear proliferation!". So instead we have radioactive spent fuel rods everywhere, no one knows what to do with.

There is so much we could do with nuclear power, if only the ideological caveman of this era would die off.

 

[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.

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.

How many lives do we risk each day letting people drive cars?

Well there you have me. The problem is there again we have human error involved

Unless we give everything we do over to robots (and that leads to terminator levels of risk) there will always be human error as a risk.

The question in the thread is why would we apply harder standards to human risk to nuclear power issues than other endeavors.

Let me put it this way. I am thinking that I need to make this extremely simple so that it is understood by you and others.

If a person wrecks a car that is human error. What is the maximum that can be killed in that single car accident. One, two or however many are in the car. How many can be killed if someone wrecks a nuclear power plant a hundred, a thousand perhaps more depending on where and the prevailing winds.
There is already evedince to suggest that incidents of cancer are higher for those in close proximity to reactors.

I noticed you didn't link that evidence.

You are misinterpreting the concept of risk, and the balance between high probability low damage, and low probability, high damage. You also don't really differentiate between risk at a personal level and risk at a regional level.

 

[Dick Foster]

I d

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.

We would do well to sit down and reevaluate our approach as well as our collective resistance toward nuclear energy. There just happens to be a better alternative at hand in thorium fueled liquid fluoride cooled nuclear fission reactors. They answer many of the shortcomings involved with uranium fueled light water cooled reactors common throughout the industry today. So called LFTRs were sucessfully developed in the late 50s and early 60s and only need to be implements in large part, there are no problems with physics to overcome. Oddly enough one of the attractive features with LFTRs is why the NRC and others stifled it's development and implementation. That is its inability to create weapons grade fissionable products for use in nuclear weapons. Today that would seem a huge benefit. There are other very attractive features compared to today's nuclear technology and it's all well documented and easy to bone up on via the internet. One need only search on thorium or LFTR.

Regular nuclear power plants do not create plutonium. The reason those reactors are not used is that they do not work efficiently, cost vs. power produced. If it did, the Air Force would have nuclear powered aircraft for the past 50 years.

Look at what happened with Russia's nuclear powered cruise missile that led to a nuclear disaster at one of its facilities.

I didn't say that did dumbass! However it's funny you mentioned the Air Force because that's how Thorium fueled LFTRs got their start. Bombs away LeMay being extremely jealous of Admiral Richovers nuclear navy that was so popular at the time, got a hankering for nuclear powered air craft. Well of course the nuclear research crowd recognized the idea on its face for the silly idea it was however they realized the opportunity to get some big buck funding research dollars so jump on the idea and took LeMay for everything he was worth and used the money to develop two fully operational LFTR reactors. This of course eliminates any worries as far as physics is concerned. It's an interesting story and the science is all there for anyone to digging in as deep as they want.
You may even want to take the opportunity to school yourself on the subject instead of taking your usual stance of an ignorant, loud mouthed, know it all for a change. Search LFTR or Thorium and dig in. There is pleanty of top level material for non technical types or if you're technically savvy, you can dig as deep as your level of physics and math understanding allows.

 

[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.

I don't see anyone here, suggesting we blindly forest gump our way into nuclear power.

I don't see anyone saying that if we just do X then nothing will ever go wrong ever again.

What I do see people suggesting is that, Nuclear power is the future, because it is. It simply is. There is no other source of nearly unlimited consistent power. And the sooner the older generation with their backward beliefs about how horrible nuclear power is, the sooner life will improve for the world.

Will there be accidents? Sure.

Again, this like Corona. Yeah we can all live in the basements until we all commit suicide from isolation and depression... but at least no one will die of Corona.

Yeah, we can all live like we're in the Congo, and be backward people living in wood heated huts.

But that isn't what most people want, or are willing to put up with. People need power. And if you want power that does not pollute or have smoke stacks, then nuclear power is the viable option.

Renewables are a failure. Anyone can see this, if they look at how things are playing out. With hundreds of billions spent, if not trillions world wide, all renewable energy sources combined, is barely 6% of world wide energy production.

Nuclear is the magic source of power. There is nothing else.

So I will ask you how many are you willing to sacrifice for nuclear power?
If you had kept up you would have seen that I said that renewables were a cottage industry. You would also see what I proposed in stead of our current nuclear program.
But I guess that is too much for a short attention span.
But I am not going to repeat myself just for you.

No one in the US has died from nuclear power yet. I see no reason, anyone must die.

In fact, more people have died from conventional power, than nuclear power world wide.

The better question is, how many millions are you willing sacrifice to avoid using nuclear power?

Again, there is no alternative. We either use nuclear power, or million will die.

So, how many millions do you not give a crap about, and are willing to sacrifice on your alter of anti-nuclear bigotry?

Check out past post or do a simple google search just to see how many nuclear problems there have been.
Exactly how many people have died due to cancer and other problems due to radiation.

Get a bit of an education before you start claimed ng that you understand

So I looked it up, AGAIN.... and sure enough, everything I said was dead on right. Maybe you should be intellectually honest, before you start claiming that you understand things.

Obviously you still don't know anything. Look up stationary low power reactor number one. It had a steam failure and meltdown in 1961.
I could also point to the fact that there is evidence to show that there are higher incidents of cancer of those around nuclear reactors.

 

[Maxdeath]

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.

Languages spoken 2000 years ago? You mean like...Latin?

Or Aztec, inca. We could go a little bit more and play with hydrography. We have people now who can't make heads or tales out of Shakespeare. How many know Ancient Greek or true Latin.

Nobody ask you to read anything sophisticated. Can you understand the sign:
"NON INTRARE
VENENUM"
And yes, I don't care about descendants of foreign invaders.

So those that spoke the language of Shakespeare are foreign invaders? I doubt that the language we speak today will even be recognized in two hundred years. How many people would have understood the meaning of that's dope?

 

[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.

How many lives do we risk each day letting people drive cars?

Well there you have me. The problem is there again we have human error involved

Unless we give everything we do over to robots (and that leads to terminator levels of risk) there will always be human error as a risk.

The question in the thread is why would we apply harder standards to human risk to nuclear power issues than other endeavors.

Let me put it this way. I am thinking that I need to make this extremely simple so that it is understood by you and others.

If a person wrecks a car that is human error. What is the maximum that can be killed in that single car accident. One, two or however many are in the car. How many can be killed if someone wrecks a nuclear power plant a hundred, a thousand perhaps more depending on where and the prevailing winds.
There is already evedince to suggest that incidents of cancer are higher for those in close proximity to reactors.

I noticed you didn't link that evidence.

You are misinterpreting the concept of risk, and the balance between high probability low damage, and low probability, high damage. You also don't really differentiate between risk at a personal level and risk at a regional level.

Lol. So you want to pretend that risk is less depending on how many are hurt.

 

[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.

How many lives do we risk each day letting people drive cars?

Well there you have me. The problem is there again we have human error involved

Unless we give everything we do over to robots (and that leads to terminator levels of risk) there will always be human error as a risk.

The question in the thread is why would we apply harder standards to human risk to nuclear power issues than other endeavors.

Let me put it this way. I am thinking that I need to make this extremely simple so that it is understood by you and others.

If a person wrecks a car that is human error. What is the maximum that can be killed in that single car accident. One, two or however many are in the car. How many can be killed if someone wrecks a nuclear power plant a hundred, a thousand perhaps more depending on where and the prevailing winds.
There is already evedince to suggest that incidents of cancer are higher for those in close proximity to reactors.

Ban cars and millions will die because of hunger. Ban nuclear power and hundreds of millions will die because of hunger and foreign invasion.

And your numbers are from where? Blue sky predictions?

My numbers are from our experience. Wars kill much more than nuclear accidents.

And wars and nuclear power have what in common? Unless you are trying to say that nuclear reactors would be great targets during a war.

 

[Rye Catcher]

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.

Who on the Right is advocating for more Nuclear Power Plants to be built? I agree, the fear from Chernobyl & Three-Mile Island, followed by Japan's Earthquake and Tsunami concerned Pols and the public. I believe Nuclear Plants will be our future, but there needs to be an effort for the Federal Government to honestly explain the benefits and pitfalls of Nuclear Power.

I found an article in Scientific America describing the next generation of nuclear reactors which I read years ago and didn't make a dent into the issue of the fear of nuclear power:

Next Generation Nuclear Power

New, safer and more economical nuclear reactors could not only satisfy many of our future energy needs but could combat global warming as well

www.scientificamerican.com

 

[JoeB131]

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.

Here's the thing. Nobody wants one of these things in their neighborhood... that's why we aren't building new ones.

yes, there have been no accidents here that have been that bad, but as we've seen from Chernobyl and Fukushima, they have been really bad in other places.

 

[Jarlaxle]

So those that spoke the language of Shakespeare are foreign invaders? I doubt that the language we speak today will even be recognized in two hundred years. How many people would have understood the meaning of that's dope?

Are you on some sort of drugs?

 

[Andylusion]

​

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.

I don't see anyone here, suggesting we blindly forest gump our way into nuclear power.

I don't see anyone saying that if we just do X then nothing will ever go wrong ever again.

What I do see people suggesting is that, Nuclear power is the future, because it is. It simply is. There is no other source of nearly unlimited consistent power. And the sooner the older generation with their backward beliefs about how horrible nuclear power is, the sooner life will improve for the world.

Will there be accidents? Sure.

Again, this like Corona. Yeah we can all live in the basements until we all commit suicide from isolation and depression... but at least no one will die of Corona.

Yeah, we can all live like we're in the Congo, and be backward people living in wood heated huts.

But that isn't what most people want, or are willing to put up with. People need power. And if you want power that does not pollute or have smoke stacks, then nuclear power is the viable option.

Renewables are a failure. Anyone can see this, if they look at how things are playing out. With hundreds of billions spent, if not trillions world wide, all renewable energy sources combined, is barely 6% of world wide energy production.

Nuclear is the magic source of power. There is nothing else.

So I will ask you how many are you willing to sacrifice for nuclear power?
If you had kept up you would have seen that I said that renewables were a cottage industry. You would also see what I proposed in stead of our current nuclear program.
But I guess that is too much for a short attention span.
But I am not going to repeat myself just for you.

No one in the US has died from nuclear power yet. I see no reason, anyone must die.

In fact, more people have died from conventional power, than nuclear power world wide.

The better question is, how many millions are you willing sacrifice to avoid using nuclear power?

Again, there is no alternative. We either use nuclear power, or million will die.

So, how many millions do you not give a crap about, and are willing to sacrifice on your alter of anti-nuclear bigotry?

Check out past post or do a simple google search just to see how many nuclear problems there have been.
Exactly how many people have died due to cancer and other problems due to radiation.

Get a bit of an education before you start claimed ng that you understand

So I looked it up, AGAIN.... and sure enough, everything I said was dead on right. Maybe you should be intellectually honest, before you start claiming that you understand things.

Obviously you still don't know anything. Look up stationary low power reactor number one. It had a steam failure and meltdown in 1961.
I could also point to the fact that there is evidence to show that there are higher incidents of cancer of those around nuclear reactors.

I believe I said nuclear power. If that was not clear enough, there have been no deaths due to commercial nuclear electricity production, in the US.

I am well aware of a government run experimental reactor that killed someone in 1961.

Moreover, I've already read up on many of the, I believe faulty reports about supposed increases in cancer near nuclear power plants.

Depending on which source you pick, some are honest enough to admit there is no empirical connection at all.

In the late 1980 s and early 1990 s, increased incidence of childhood leukemia were reported near United Kingdom nuclear facilities but the cause or causes remained unknown because it was estimated that the radiation doses from these facilities were too low to explain the increased leukemia​

​

Cancer in children residing near nuclear power plants: an open question

Global warming and the established responsibility of the anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases represent a strong push towards the construction of new nuclear power plants (NPPs) to cope with the growing energy needs. The toxicity of nuclear waste ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

 

[Andylusion]

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.

Here's the thing. Nobody wants one of these things in their neighborhood... that's why we aren't building new ones.

yes, there have been no accidents here that have been that bad, but as we've seen from Chernobyl and Fukushima, they have been really bad in other places.

And I'm fine with that. I understand people don't want a nuclear power plant right built five feet from their child's elementary school.

Fine. However, here's the reality... as the population of the world goes up, as technology advanced, we will need more power.

As things stand right now.... NOW.... green energy is a pathetic, but expensively pathetic joke.

After hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars spent here in Ohio on renewable power.... if you combine all renewable power from all sources across the state, the total combined power out put of all of them, is less than half the power output of one single nuclear power plant.

Renewable is not a solution. And it won't be a solution for the foreseeable future.

So you have basically 3 total options. Natural gas, which is fine, but will only go so far. Coal when the left-wing seems to be against. And Nuclear.

That's it. Or we can all have mass deaths from the chaos of having our cities max out the power grids and going black.

 

[JoeB131]

And I'm fine with that. I understand people don't want a nuclear power plant right built five feet from their child's elementary school.

Fine. However, here's the reality... as the population of the world goes up, as technology advanced, we will need more power.

As things stand right now.... NOW.... green energy is a pathetic, but expensively pathetic joke.

Only because the people who profit off of dirty energy don't want to invest the money into it. If we did a crash program of developing green energy, on the scale of lets say, WWII, we'd be able to get there.

So you have basically 3 total options. Natural gas, which is fine, but will only go so far. Coal when the left-wing seems to be against. And Nuclear.

That's it. Or we can all have mass deaths from the chaos of having our cities max out the power grids and going black.

You use a false analogy. Those are not the only choices. Clearly, we have options of biofuels, solar, wind, hydro electric, etc.

The problem with nuclear power is that we still don't have a way to safely dispose of the byproducts, which stay toxic for thousands of years. And if there is an accident like Fukushima, we're kind of screwed.

The Chernobyl exclusion zone covers 2600 square kilometers. The Soviet Union is gone now, but the exclusion zone is never going away.

 

[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?

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.

How many lives do we risk each day letting people drive cars?

Well there you have me. The problem is there again we have human error involved

Unless we give everything we do over to robots (and that leads to terminator levels of risk) there will always be human error as a risk.

The question in the thread is why would we apply harder standards to human risk to nuclear power issues than other endeavors.

Let me put it this way. I am thinking that I need to make this extremely simple so that it is understood by you and others.

If a person wrecks a car that is human error. What is the maximum that can be killed in that single car accident. One, two or however many are in the car. How many can be killed if someone wrecks a nuclear power plant a hundred, a thousand perhaps more depending on where and the prevailing winds.
There is already evedince to suggest that incidents of cancer are higher for those in close proximity to reactors.

Ban cars and millions will die because of hunger. Ban nuclear power and hundreds of millions will die because of hunger and foreign invasion.

And your numbers are from where? Blue sky predictions?

My numbers are from our experience. Wars kill much more than nuclear accidents.

And wars and nuclear power have what in common? Unless you are trying to say that nuclear reactors would be great targets during a war.

Energy means industry, industry means weapon. We have nuclear power - we have weapon. We don't have nuclear power - we don't have weapon. Less weapon we have - higher risk of a big war.

 

[Silver Cat]

The Chernobyl exclusion zone covers 2600 square kilometers. The Soviet Union is gone now, but the exclusion zone is never going away.

In fact, it is already used. Actually, Belorussia starts the state program (including building railroads) of the land development in the zone.
Money talks, BS walks, you know.

 

[Maxdeath]

So those that spoke the language of Shakespeare are foreign invaders? I doubt that the language we speak today will even be recognized in two hundred years. How many people would have understood the meaning of that's dope?

Are you on some sort of drugs?

No but I think you might be

 

[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.

I don't see anyone here, suggesting we blindly forest gump our way into nuclear power.

I don't see anyone saying that if we just do X then nothing will ever go wrong ever again.

What I do see people suggesting is that, Nuclear power is the future, because it is. It simply is. There is no other source of nearly unlimited consistent power. And the sooner the older generation with their backward beliefs about how horrible nuclear power is, the sooner life will improve for the world.

Will there be accidents? Sure.

Again, this like Corona. Yeah we can all live in the basements until we all commit suicide from isolation and depression... but at least no one will die of Corona.

Yeah, we can all live like we're in the Congo, and be backward people living in wood heated huts.

But that isn't what most people want, or are willing to put up with. People need power. And if you want power that does not pollute or have smoke stacks, then nuclear power is the viable option.

Renewables are a failure. Anyone can see this, if they look at how things are playing out. With hundreds of billions spent, if not trillions world wide, all renewable energy sources combined, is barely 6% of world wide energy production.

Nuclear is the magic source of power. There is nothing else.

So I will ask you how many are you willing to sacrifice for nuclear power?
If you had kept up you would have seen that I said that renewables were a cottage industry. You would also see what I proposed in stead of our current nuclear program.
But I guess that is too much for a short attention span.
But I am not going to repeat myself just for you.

No one in the US has died from nuclear power yet. I see no reason, anyone must die.

In fact, more people have died from conventional power, than nuclear power world wide.

The better question is, how many millions are you willing sacrifice to avoid using nuclear power?

Again, there is no alternative. We either use nuclear power, or million will die.

So, how many millions do you not give a crap about, and are willing to sacrifice on your alter of anti-nuclear bigotry?

Check out past post or do a simple google search just to see how many nuclear problems there have been.
Exactly how many people have died due to cancer and other problems due to radiation.

Get a bit of an education before you start claimed ng that you understand

So I looked it up, AGAIN.... and sure enough, everything I said was dead on right. Maybe you should be intellectually honest, before you start claiming that you understand things.

Obviously you still don't know anything. Look up stationary low power reactor number one. It had a steam failure and meltdown in 1961.
I could also point to the fact that there is evidence to show that there are higher incidents of cancer of those around nuclear reactors.

I believe I said nuclear power. If that was not clear enough, there have been no deaths due to commercial nuclear electricity production, in the US.

I am well aware of a government run experimental reactor that killed someone in 1961.

Moreover, I've already read up on many of the, I believe faulty reports about supposed increases in cancer near nuclear power plants.

Depending on which source you pick, some are honest enough to admit there is no empirical connection at all.

In the late 1980 s and early 1990 s, increased incidence of childhood leukemia were reported near United Kingdom nuclear facilities but the cause or causes remained unknown because it was estimated that the radiation doses from these facilities were too low to explain the increased leukemia​

​

Cancer in children residing near nuclear power plants: an open question

Global warming and the established responsibility of the anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases represent a strong push towards the construction of new nuclear power plants (NPPs) to cope with the growing energy needs. The toxicity of nuclear waste ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

So now you want to move the goal posts? Ok that still does not account for the three fuel rods that have never been found at the humbolt PG&E plant. The whole compliment of fuel rods from the decommissioned plant are stored on site in dry casks that are not scheduled to be moved and as far as anyone knows are only considered good for sixty years.
As you have stated there is a chance of increased cancer. In Great Britian it is unknown because it was "estimated" that the levels were to low. Key word there being estimated.

 

[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.

How many lives do we risk each day letting people drive cars?

Well there you have me. The problem is there again we have human error involved

Unless we give everything we do over to robots (and that leads to terminator levels of risk) there will always be human error as a risk.

The question in the thread is why would we apply harder standards to human risk to nuclear power issues than other endeavors.

Let me put it this way. I am thinking that I need to make this extremely simple so that it is understood by you and others.

If a person wrecks a car that is human error. What is the maximum that can be killed in that single car accident. One, two or however many are in the car. How many can be killed if someone wrecks a nuclear power plant a hundred, a thousand perhaps more depending on where and the prevailing winds.
There is already evedince to suggest that incidents of cancer are higher for those in close proximity to reactors.

Ban cars and millions will die because of hunger. Ban nuclear power and hundreds of millions will die because of hunger and foreign invasion.

And your numbers are from where? Blue sky predictions?

My numbers are from our experience. Wars kill much more than nuclear accidents.

And wars and nuclear power have what in common? Unless you are trying to say that nuclear reactors would be great targets during a war.

Energy means industry, industry means weapon. We have nuclear power - we have weapon. We don't have nuclear power - we don't have weapon. Less weapon we have - higher risk of a big war.

So you don't think that being able to completely destroy the earth is enough of a deterrent? We need what to destroy it two or thre times over?

 

[Maxdeath]

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.

Here's the thing. Nobody wants one of these things in their neighborhood... that's why we aren't building new ones.

yes, there have been no accidents here that have been that bad, but as we've seen from Chernobyl and Fukushima, they have been really bad in other places.

And I'm fine with that. I understand people don't want a nuclear power plant right built five feet from their child's elementary school.

Fine. However, here's the reality... as the population of the world goes up, as technology advanced, we will need more power.

As things stand right now.... NOW.... green energy is a pathetic, but expensively pathetic joke.

After hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars spent here in Ohio on renewable power.... if you combine all renewable power from all sources across the state, the total combined power out put of all of them, is less than half the power output of one single nuclear power plant.

Renewable is not a solution. And it won't be a solution for the foreseeable future.

So you have basically 3 total options. Natural gas, which is fine, but will only go so far. Coal when the left-wing seems to be against. And Nuclear.

That's it. Or we can all have mass deaths from the chaos of having our cities max out the power grids and going black.

You mean like California is doing now? Without maxing out the power grid.

 

[Andylusion]

And I'm fine with that. I understand people don't want a nuclear power plant right built five feet from their child's elementary school.

Fine. However, here's the reality... as the population of the world goes up, as technology advanced, we will need more power.

As things stand right now.... NOW.... green energy is a pathetic, but expensively pathetic joke.

Only because the people who profit off of dirty energy don't want to invest the money into it. If we did a crash program of developing green energy, on the scale of lets say, WWII, we'd be able to get there.

So you have basically 3 total options. Natural gas, which is fine, but will only go so far. Coal when the left-wing seems to be against. And Nuclear.

That's it. Or we can all have mass deaths from the chaos of having our cities max out the power grids and going black.

You use a false analogy. Those are not the only choices. Clearly, we have options of biofuels, solar, wind, hydro electric, etc.

The problem with nuclear power is that we still don't have a way to safely dispose of the byproducts, which stay toxic for thousands of years. And if there is an accident like Fukushima, we're kind of screwed.

The Chernobyl exclusion zone covers 2600 square kilometers. The Soviet Union is gone now, but the exclusion zone is never going away.

Only because the people who profit off of dirty energy don't want to invest the money into it. If we did a crash program of developing green energy, on the scale of lets say, WWII, we'd be able to get there.

Once again, the left-wing has to embraces myths and legends, to support their garbage ideology.

BP Solar - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Renewable power | Shell Global

Shell provides renewable energy and low-carbon options through wind, solar, hydrogen and more. Learn more about our projects.

www.shell.com

Climate Change Initiatives

Chevron shares the concerns of governments and the public about climate change.

www.chevron.com

Solar and wind: our ambition in renewable energies

Confident of the opportunities afforded by renewable energies, TotalEnergies aims to achieve a production capacity of approximately 100 gigawatts by 2030 through the development of solar and wind energy resources.

www.total.com

Renewable Energy Position

We are leveraging our expertise, intellectual property and physical assets in pursuit of economically viable, renewable energy business opportunities.

www.conocophillips.com

Nearly every single major energy company, has investments in so-called 'green energy'.

The reason left-wingers blindly deny that they do this, is because they live under the ridiculous notion that if you only had investment, then magically renewables would be practical and profitable. If only people would pour billions of dollars in this money pit, the pit would magically fill in.

No, you are wrong. People have investment hundreds of billions into renewables, and they still suck.

Sorry, but the laws of physics does not magically change because you demand it does so, so that your renewable dogma will make sense.

The left-wings only answer to absolutely everything is "throw money at it!" Obama did that, and none of those programs made a difference, and some like Sylondra got the money, and split.

No, you are wrong.

You use a false analogy. Those are not the only choices. Clearly, we have options of biofuels, solar, wind, hydro electric, etc.

Hydroelectric power, is considered conventional power. Further, none of the dams of the past, would be built today, thanks to the environment regulations the left-wing has put in place.

So you can stop it with the whole hydro power, when your side is the biggest opponent of hydro power.

Again.... as I have said numerous times. We have spent billions on billions on Solar, Wind and Biofuels, and they all suck. If you combined all the power created by all of those sources totaled together in Ohio, it wouldn't even be half the power created by one single nuclear reactor in Ohio.

We've spent hundreds on hundreds of billions, and still it's a tiny fraction of power created.

Even Germany, which supposedly has the most renewable power in the world, shows us that Renewable are total failure.

Now according to this, you would think that almost 50% of German power comes from reneweables. And this is what the morons on the left-wing want you to believe.

The difference between a rational thinking human being, and a mindless parrot, can easily be determined by if you believe that ridiculous crap above.

The key to that graph above, is that they are measuring installed capacity. Not if it is actually producing that much power.

If you look at real time power generation, you'll notice a completely different story.

Notices the grey is conventional power production. Green is wind power. Yellow is solar power.

You know what we can see from this? On an average day, all renewable power combined barely covered 1/5th of the power produced.

Yes, there was one day where wind power was able to produce a significant portion of the power. But you can't count on that. You can't count on the wind blowing at optimal speeds high enough to actually offset conventional power.

What this means for the left-wing ideologues, is that if the city needs 40 GWs of power, you need 40 GWs of conventional power, no matter how many billions you wasted on renewable sources.

And if you need to build a conventional plant anyway... then all those renewable sources are literally just a waste. Which is what they are. They are not a solution, and never will be in the foreseeable future.

That's not option, that's empirically based fact. You guys need to grow up and actually learn some science.