feedback (imported) wrote: Sun Feb 12, 2012 8:29 pm Lets see, the government,( you and I via taxes ) put up the money to build the reactors. If there is an accident which there are many if you care to check, the power company is only responsible for the first 50 million in damages and the gov. picks up the rest. They charge you for power, for cleaning up there messes for building it in the first place etc.etc.etc. In the mean time we are all being irradiated and suffering from an increase of all kinds of cancer just so a few large corporations can make a bundle. The radiation where I live is at about 5 times normal background radiation because of fukashima. I am old enough that it is probably not going to affect me much, but I have granchildren who are going to pay the price. How many million more people have to die before we get smart enough to say enough?

I don't blame nuclear power because idiots made poor decisions. Listen, in every technology there have been countless lives lost as well as maiming large numbers of people. How many people died to make the railroad the indispensable transportation we rely on today? The number of miners who died is insanely high, before mining became safe as it is today, in the US. What about automobiles? If this many people are year were killed by nuclear power, people would have abandoned it long ago.

The problem is not nuclear power. The problem is idiotic decisions like putting emergency generators in the basement of a place that was likely to flood in a disaster. Or to have containment buildings that can't withstand the force of the explosion that hydrogen that might build up in them can cause. And the other stupid decision was to store expended fuel rods in water instead of paying the cost of permanently decommissioning them. Or in the case of the US, where we can't agree on a place to store them, or a method.

There is no reason we have to have these kinds of reactors either. There are much safer designs that do not rely on cooling water at all. We don't need to run from nuclear power. We need to make sure we do it right, which so far, we have not.

Elizabeth

The Navy has been using it safely for years.

River

Riverwind (imported) wrote: Tue Feb 14, 2012 3:47 am The Navy has been using it safely for years.

River

Au contraire!

The USN has yet been able to cover up their oopsy(s). Don'tchyaknow.

I have first hand experience with a Navy radiation death they could not diagnose. Duh!

It was classic acute radiation poisoning down to the hair loss, marrow suppression and death.

Moi

Elizabeth (imported) wrote: Mon Feb 13, 2012 11:09 pm I don't blame nuclear power because idiots made poor decisions. Listen, in every technology there have been countless lives lost as well as maiming large numbers of people. How many people died to make the railroad the indispensable transportation we rely on today? The number of miners who died is insanely high, before mining became safe as it is today, in the US. What about automobiles? If this many people are year were killed by nuclear power, people would have abandoned it long ago.

The problem is not nuclear power. The problem is idiotic decisions like putting emergency generators in the basement of a place that was likely to flood in a disaster. Or to have containment buildings that can't withstand the force of the explosion that hydrogen that might build up in them can cause. And the other stupid decision was to store expended fuel rods in water instead of paying the cost of permanently decommissioning them. Or in the case of the US, where we can't agree on a place to store them, or a method.

There is no reason we have to have these kinds of reactors either. There are much safer designs that do not rely on cooling water at all. We don't need to run from nuclear power. We need to make sure we do it right, which so far, we have not.

Elizabeth

France has an excellent record of nuclear safety because the French power companies are run as public utilities and not for profit, so they build plants, designed by nuclear engineers, to provide power and operate efficiently; in the US the for profit companies are run by accountants who design facilities on the cheap and they malfunction because they were designed by people who have no business in the business.

gareth19 (imported) wrote: Wed Feb 15, 2012 1:04 am France has an excellent record of nuclear safety because the French power companies are run as public utilities and not for profit, so they build plants, designed by nuclear engineers, to provide power and operate efficiently; in the US the for profit companies are run by accountants who design facilities on the cheap and they malfunction because they were designed by people who have no business in the business.

Just as damaging as the "

gareth19 (imported) wrote: Wed Feb 15, 2012 1:04 am accountants who design facilities on the cheap

" is the fact that in the USA each nuclear plant is unique and has unique equipment. So when something goes wrong there is no off the shelf or immediate solution. Personnel have to be specially trained on each power station.

This reminds me of BIG ALLIS (which is Ravenswood #3 in New York) that required three or four rail road cars to transport the worlds biggest replacement axle for the one that broke down. Yes, a giant monster turbine with a bad axle that took months to cast in perfect steel and then machine and idiotic problems to transport. All the while the plant was offline.

Now you can see he wisdom of France's cookie-cutter designs for nuclear reactors.

moi621 (imported) wrote: Tue Feb 14, 2012 9:50 pm Au contraire!

The USN has yet been able to cover up their oopsy(s). Don'tchyaknow.

I have first hand experience with a Navy radiation death they could not diagnose. Duh!

It was classic acute radiation poisoning down to the hair loss, marrow suppression and death.

Moi

Well, moi... Perhaps YOU could tell us more?

You start with skin erythema... 'better known as radiation burns' Did he have this?

Next, you have the 'bone marrow syndrome' but this only occurs after a time, and it takes 200 REM or more to cause this. However, the effect INCREASES in proportion to the dose of radiation received. This is commonly used to destroy diseased bone marrow in preparation for a bone marrow transplant. It is done in a radiotherapy setting.

Was the dose received all at once or was it fractionated and protracted? Was the dose delivered constantly, or over a period of time? You know that one time doses over 1000 REM cause death in 3 to 4 days, but also you have the Gastrointestinal Syndrome at these dose levels. You know, where the entire lining of the digestive tract blisters, burns and then sloughs off causing uncontrollable bloody diarrhea. This is followed by sepsis as the normal flora and fauna of the digestive tract infect the blood.

Or, did he simply have the Central Nervous System Syndrome where he died within an hour of radiation-induced meningitis from a dose on the order of 10,000 REM? (more or less)

Did he describe to you a Prodromal Syndrome? These start occurring with one time radiation doses of 50 REM, which are NOT fatal... usually... unless the individual has underlying medical problems.

Was there a latent period involved in which he had NO symptoms after the prodromal syndrome?

Did YOU run toxicology tests?

You know, Thalium poisoning causes the symptoms that YOU describe, as do many other toxic substances, and radiation deaths are NEVER singular, unless they are INTENTIONAL...

Radiation deaths among radiation workers occur in GROUPS. They are due to unsafe practice, or faulty designs, not due to unsafe conditions caused by poor designs, usually these are dealing with nuclear accidents like Cherynobl or the more recent one in Japan.

That IS of course, unless one INGESTS a radioactive substance given as a poison. This is detected by simply running an radio assay meter (you know, like a geiger counter) over the body postmortem and measure the residual radioactivity.

If it is uranium or plutonium generally it is low level and is practically undetectable and the person dies from a Cancer, usually of the bone or lung, but this can take years.

So, tell us more so that I may confirm YOUR diagnosis. I do NOT believe it, moi.

So show me.

Riverwind (imported) wrote: Tue Feb 14, 2012 3:47 am The Navy has been using it safely for years.

RiverFor US Navy - may be. As for Russian...

Chazhma bay, 1985. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_submarine_K-431

And more than a few lesser accidents.

>>Heaven's to burning nukes (and they did burn but not explode)

>>"Yes, it's perfectly safe up there in a secret Russian sub base" Said three-eyes the sub base's PR person from inside his isolation suit.

>>

>>That's like the old joke about the nuclear lab inspector whose wife is already in bed when he gets home and says "Honey, put the light out" and he answers "But the light isn't on, my dear."

>>

Report: Russia Nuclear Disaster Narrowly Averted In Submarine Fire

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/1 ... ?ref=world

By Guy Faulconbridge

MOSCOW, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Russia came close to nuclear disaster in late December when a blaze engulfed a nuclear-powered submarine carrying atomic weapons, a leading Russian magazine reported, contradicting official assurances that it was not armed.

Russian officials said at the time that all nuclear weapons aboard the Yekaterinburg nuclear submarine had been unloaded well before a fire engulfed the 167-metre (550 feet) vessel and there had been no risk of a radiation leak.

But the respected Vlast weekly magazine quoted several sources in the Russian navy as saying that throughout the fire on Dec. 29 the submarine was carrying 16 R-29 intercontinental ballistic missiles, each armed with four nuclear warheads.

"Russia, for a day, was on the brink of the biggest catastrophe since the time of Chernobyl," Vlast reported. The 1986 disaster in modern-day Ukraine is regarded as the world's worst nuclear accident.

Neither the Russian Defence Ministry nor the office of Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who has responsibility for military matters, would immediately comment on the report. A spokesman for the navy could not be contacted.

SPARKS FLY

The fire started when welding sparks ignited wooden scaffolding around the 18,200-tonne submarine at the Roslyakovo docks, 1,500 km (900 miles) north of Moscow and one of the main shipyards used by Russia's northern fleet.

The rubber covering of the submarine then caught fire, sending flames and black smoke 10 metres (30 feet) above the stricken vessel. Firemen battled the blaze for a day and a night before partially sinking the submarine to douse the flames, according to media reports.

Vlast reported that immediately after the fire the Yekaterinburg sailed to the navy's weapons store, an unusual trip for a damaged submarine supposedly carrying no weapons and casting doubt on assurances that it was not armed.

"K-84 was in dock with rockets and torpedoes on board," the magazine said, adding that apart from the nuclear weapons the submarine was carrying torpedoes and mines as well as its two nuclear reactors.

The magazine said that if one of the torpedoes had exploded it could have threatened the nuclear missiles, leading to an extremely dangerous nuclear accident.

Media reports of what happened at the time of the fire were contradictory and foreign journalists were unable to gain access to the high security zone.

Russia's worst post-Soviet submarine disaster was in August 2000 when the nuclear submarine Kursk sank in the Barents Sea killing all 118 crewmen aboard. (Editing by Ben Harding)

There's pictures on this at the website with large captions that I can't copy over here...

kristoff wrote: Sun Feb 12, 2012 9:44 am Just remember, it is always an issue of NIMBY - Not In My Back Yard. Forcing the issue down someone's throat is the only way it will happen.

Very true. The U.K. is quite bad about this. Every time they try to install wind turbines or solar plants, there are always NIMBYs kicking up a storm because their views will be "spoiled." I have a solution to this problem. When we start having power shortages, the NIMBYs who stop new plants being build should be the first ones who are disconnected!