in fact, he didn't mention alternatives at all but he did mention the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, built right on top of the San Andreas fault, right on the coast... Alan Rudy
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Thanks. My frustration was with really bright people I know who have studied nuclear science in some depth ... who turn into wooden blockheads when I object to building nuclear power plants.
It's been like that for decades. They start parsing the relative risk of this or that and go on about decay rates and alpha, beta, and gamma radiation risks. Somewhere along the way they bring up medical management.
It is an amazing level of denial. I mean awesome. Example. When I was working as a bio-science tech, I set up a corn plant experiment in the Cobalt-60 room at LBL Berkeley, closed the big steel and concrete door and went over to the control panel and turned on the switch for the calulated time. This control panel was built with technology that dated from the early 1950s. Actually I trusted the old electromechanical analog stuff more than digital shit anyway, but nevermind.
Somewhere in this experiment I got a dose reading on my DOE issued dosemeter. I followed every safety rule to the letter.
Below is a comment from today's UCS update note:
``One of the most disturbing characteristics of this event has been the way that the Japanese government has kept their own population in the dark, or in most cases outright lied to them. The nuclear industry itself is providing the information to the news channels, protecting their own interests above those of the public. Until yesterday, every news release was accompanied by a "but we have it under control" qualifier. And the information that is/was being released was the most optimistic possible, totally detached from the reality of the situation. Never has the Japanese government issued statements saying "This is what's happening, this is what we are doing, but if it doesn't work, this could be the next serious problem."
This sort of outright lying by authorities is actually making things worse in people's minds, since they have lost trust in their leadership.
Being in the middle of the USA, I realize that there is no real danger to me and my neighbors. But those around me are worried, and again, no statements are being promulgated by the American leadership to calm the great ignorant masses.
My father worked in nuclear plant design until he quit out of frustration and shame. He used to tell me how the containment vessel was really a last resort coffin to keep the nuclear monster in, because nuclear plants were designed to shut down and hope for the best in case of catastrophe. Yes, the plant could withstand a direct hit by a 747 airplane crashing into it, but the control centers, power supplies, cooling pumps, ducting etc were largely unprotected, and the reactor would run out of control in many scenarios. His biggest anger was with those pools of 'spent' fuel, highly radioactive material that might as well be in a cloth tent as far as protection was concerned. Highly radioactive material just sitting there in swimming pools. He just could not work in an industry that was willing to mislead and endanger humanity in such a way.
(Answer to a question below. The zirconium casings oxidize when overheated, splitting the water molecules, and absorbing oxygen molecules and releasing the hydrogen molecules)''
http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/3892719255/spent-fuel-pools-at-fukushima#disqus_thread
Just the fact that a nuclear power plant is only safe as long as it has an external supply of electric power should explain by itself why all these plants are catastrophies waiting to happen.
This is a little bit hard to explain. There is an engineering principle involved called the dead man switch. This was a control designed during the railroad era at the turn of the last century. The train only runs as long as the driver holds a spring loaded switch on. If he dies or releases the switch, the train stops.
The whole conceptual frame of a nuclear reactor is built against this deadman safety switch principle. Ironically, all the auxillary safety designs depend on some form of the deadman principle, like control rods dropping in between fuel rods and shuting down the reaction.. But the problem is there is no big deadman safety switch. In other words, the plant depends on an outside external source of electricity. If that source is cut off and not restored, the plant will go into some form of meltdown.
Think of a nuclear power plant as the classic WWII handgrenade with a safety pin pulled. It won't go off as long as you hold down the handle.
CG