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Four Years Since The Phoronix Chernobyl Expedition

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  • #11
    Originally posted by Vim_User View Post
    Nonsense. Those power plants are planned, built, maintained and operated by humans. Mistakes will be made and disastrous accidents will happen in the future, as they happened in the past, no matter how safe you think those reactors are, simply because humans make mistakes.
    Let's see, USA nuclear plant operators undergo training every 6 weeks. So every single procedure is so deeply ingrained in their minds, it's unlikely for any significant mistake to be made.
    Plus computers monitor every remotely important reactor parameter, with all data monitored by quadruple probes, and action only taken when at least 2 probes show something wrong (preventing a single bad probe from triggering wrong safety action).
    Three Mile Island and Chernobyl could have been prevented with computers analyzing parameters and all failure modes programmed into monitoring software (for best recommendations).
    The only parallel I see in human endeavours in large aircraft, with their triple or quadruple everything.
    I also know quite a bit about jet aircraft being a private pilot with instrument ratings and a junkie of large aircraft technology.
    I strongly suggest you go learn about this before making some uninformed criticism.
    Nuclear power has enough people criticizing it out of malice, please don't criticize out of ignorance.
    Russia and other former USSR states did learn a lot from Chernobyl, don't think for a second that they didn't. Plus almost every nuclear plant in the world is subject to IAEA inspections plus national regulatory inspections. After radiation from Chernobyl hit Europe serious countries, it became very clear to the whole world that what one country does with nuclear power matters to every other country when the subject is safety.

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    • #12
      Originally posted by macpacheco View Post
      Let's see, USA nuclear plant operators undergo training every 6 weeks. So every single procedure is so deeply ingrained in their minds, it's unlikely for any significant mistake to be made.
      Plus computers monitor every remotely important reactor parameter, with all data monitored by quadruple probes, and action only taken when at least 2 probes show something wrong (preventing a single bad probe from triggering wrong safety action).
      Three Mile Island and Chernobyl could have been prevented with computers analyzing parameters and all failure modes programmed into monitoring software (for best recommendations).
      The only parallel I see in human endeavours in large aircraft, with their triple or quadruple everything.
      I also know quite a bit about jet aircraft being a private pilot with instrument ratings and a junkie of large aircraft technology.
      I strongly suggest you go learn about this before making some uninformed criticism.
      Nuclear power has enough people criticizing it out of malice, please don't criticize out of ignorance.
      Russia and other former USSR states did learn a lot from Chernobyl, don't think for a second that they didn't. Plus almost every nuclear plant in the world is subject to IAEA inspections plus national regulatory inspections. After radiation from Chernobyl hit Europe serious countries, it became very clear to the whole world that what one country does with nuclear power matters to every other country when the subject is safety.
      My criticism is exactly what I said before: Those power plants, like anything else built and operated by humans, are not 100% safe. If something is as dangerous as a nuclear powerplant 99.9% simply is not enough. So you want to tell me that I shouldn't be worried about the 0.1% (or let it even be 0.01%), just because you had an 8 weeks intro course and know for certain that accidents can't happen?

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      • #13
        Originally posted by Vim_User View Post
        My criticism is exactly what I said before: Those power plants, like anything else built and operated by humans, are not 100% safe. If something is as dangerous as a nuclear powerplant 99.9% simply is not enough. So you want to tell me that I shouldn't be worried about the 0.1% (or let it even be 0.01%), just because you had an 8 weeks intro course and know for certain that accidents can't happen?
        I took the intro course after having studied radiation and nuclear technology for about 18 months using less formal sources.
        I got an A+ grade (78 of 80 questions answered right).
        The main reason I got that course was so people couldn't criticize me for talking about nuclear technology with information from youtube and wikipedia, and now I'm still an idiot. Please take the class before disqualifying the class and my nuclear education.
        Fukushima reactors that meltdown were 45 years old. 1960s designs.
        Gen III+ reactors were designed to be immune to such scenarios (and were designed about a decade before Fukushima).
        If we got rid of all Gen II reactors in the world, then I would tell you with all confidence that nuclear power is 99.999999999% safe.
        I believe your perception that a nuclear accident is serious is mostly driven by a hollywood driven misperception about the risks of radiation. Godzilla, the Incredible Hulk, deadly gamma rays, all of that BS, OMG !
        Radiation is everywhere. Our bodies produce about half a million radioactive disintegrations per minute by its own devices. We produce gamma and beta rays continuously. Radioactivity is like Aspirin, taking one or two Aspirin a day is BETTER than none, while 100 Aspirin will probably kill you. There is a lot of compelling evidence in that sense.
        Finally, 200 thousand people die yearly from coal mining, transport, burning and pollution effects. Peaceful nuclear energy killed less than a thousand people over the last 50 years we've been using it seriously. That's a fact. Even hydro electricity and natural gas are far more dangerous than nuclear.
        Please inform yourself.

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        • #14
          > Even hydro electricity [...] are far more dangerous than nuclear.

          Wow! That's what they tell in the "nuclear" courses? Do they bring photographs of the babies born after Chernobyl? Those with no arms, no legs? too deformed?

          Hidro electricity is more dangerous?

          Don't terrorists exist? Aren't nuclear sites a target? And big enough earthquakes? And accidents with planes colliding? And other factors?

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          • #15
            Originally posted by Nth_man View Post
            > Even hydro electricity [...] are far more dangerous than nuclear.

            Wow! That's what they tell in the "nuclear" courses? Do they bring photographs of the babies born after Chernobyl? Those with no arms, no legs? too deformed?

            Hidro electricity is more dangerous?

            Don't terrorists exist? Aren't nuclear sites a target? And big enough earthquakes? And accidents with planes colliding? And other factors?
            The course does spend one out of 8 weeks on radiation and another week on nuclear safety and nuclear certification standards.
            Most data about hydro, coal and natural gas accidents I got from elsewhere.

            For every deformed baby in Chernobyl hydro killed 10 people from burst dams.
            For every deformed baby in Chernobyl there is one thousand killed by coal.
            A single hydro dam burst in the 70s in China kill 170k people. Every year burst dams kill many hundreds.

            The issue is nuclear is just like aviation. The safest transportation form. You are at greater risk of suffering an accident on the drive to the airport than on a flight around the world. Yet aviation accidents get all the attention, and car accidents are ignored.
            If we do to the airlines what anti nuclear people want to do to nuclear, we'd be talking about banning all airlines from operating, grounding them for good.
            Yes, you are deeply misinformed.

            We need to accept the fact that the press is 99% interested in sensation, 1% in facts. They have zero interest in telling a dull 100% factual story, so they didn't call the nuclear safety experts to talk about Fukushima, they called all the nut jobs they could find in an hour. Even CNN did that. And perhaps they got so guilty about it they supported Pandora's Promise to make up for their huge fuckup !

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            • #16
              Originally posted by macpacheco View Post
              If we got rid of all Gen II reactors in the world, then I would tell you with all confidence that nuclear power is 99.999999999% safe.
              I guess they said the same about previous generations of nuclear power plants. And of course they will say that GenIII plants are unsafe and that GenIV plants are 99.999999999% once they start to sell GenIV plants.

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              • #17
                Other than what to do with nuclear waste, the risks and challenges of the nuclear industry can be summed up in two words.

                Last edited by bridgman; 27 April 2014, 09:20 PM.
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                • #18
                  Originally posted by Vim_User View Post
                  I guess they said the same about previous generations of nuclear power plants. And of course they will say that GenIII plants are unsafe and that GenIV plants are 99.999999999% once they start to sell GenIV plants.
                  While you are guessing, I'm studying technical data. While you are making fun of it. I'm reading posts / watching videos from many PhDs working on Throrium / Uranium Molten Salt reactors on exactly why those are orders of magnitude safer than any water cooled reactor (95% of currently operating reactors).
                  Plus you err on ignoring the simple fact that France has an impeccable track record on nuclear, being the country #2 in total energy production from electricity (73% of France's electricity come from nuclear), USA is the top energy producer from nuclear (much larger market, like 19% of electricity from nuclear), with a single nuclear death over the last 10 years (Uranium mining). Engineers learn from accidents what not to do and from the safest areas in that area what to do, and if you clean up your mistaken pre conceptions about nuclear energy you will find it to be far safer than living near a hydro dam or a large natural gas power plant.
                  I would have zero problem living 10 miles from any operating nuclear reactor in North/South/Central America, Scandinavia or any other NATO country.
                  Please educate yourself on the matter. So far nobody has quoted any hard facts or questioned my statements in any substantial ways except by quoting unspecified studies.

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                  • #19
                    Originally posted by bridgman View Post
                    Other than what to do with nuclear waste, the risks and challenges of the nuclear industry can be summed up in two words.

                    Only on FOX would an idiot loosely resembling Homer Simpson be allowed to clean the floors of a nuclear power plant.
                    Once again, Hollywood tells you BS, you take it as gospel.
                    Please educate yourself.
                    Nuclear power plant operators spend 6 weeks / yr on training and safety drills.
                    In order to be a certified nuclear operator you will have to pass a lot of extremely complex tests. ORAL tests, you will need to be able to verbally explain things in detail, show you understand complex concepts.
                    A nuclear plant owner chooses who will undergo nuclear operator training, then he's tested by the NRC.
                    Last edited by macpacheco; 27 April 2014, 09:26 PM.

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                    • #20
                      I live near one nuclear plant and drive past another on the way to work every day. For a while my circle of friends included a lot of folks working at both plants -- obviously Homer Simpson is not representative of nuclear power workers and I don't think he actually exists and works at a nuclear power plant, but he's not *that* far off from the worst people on the worst days. You can't eliminate the human factor -- question is whether you can build enough layers of checks and balances so that the worst case result is acceptable.

                      Fukushima was probably a pretty fair "worst case we're likely to see in a few lifetimes" as long as all the plant maintenance is no worse and the civil response plans and execution are equally good everywhere in the world -- do you believe that is the case ?
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