Kyoto Treaty

[MonteZuma]

sigh...first off, a properly functioning Nuclear power plant creates no pollution.

Uranium and especially nuclear waste are pollutants.

 

Also, we need to produce power in mass so solar collectors and windmills simply aren't going to be enough

Or else we need to lower our energy demand. My preferred option.

 

Maybe with development they could, but maybe with development we can make a nuclear power plant that doesn't melt down....oh wait...we have.

Uranium mines, nuclear power plants and nuclear waste are never 100% safe. The probability of a catastrophe might be small, but the impact of one is huge (eg Chernobyl).

 

Chernobyl was the only meltdown in history.  But, that was only after the personell threw everything they know about nuclear safety out the window and rebuilt their reactor in such a way as to disable safety systems, basically in an attempt to m!@#$%^&* produce weapons grade plutonium.

Safety systems in Chernobyl weren't the main problem. Design flaws and poor construction were. In fact, the Chernobyl disaster was the result of a safety test that went wrong. The Soviets wanted to test their reactors to see what would happen in the event of an attack - like the attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor that was under construction and destroyed by the Israelis at about the same time. The person in charge of the reactor had a lot of experience and thought he understood how the reactor would work under extreme conditions. He didn't. He made an error of judgment. People do that.

 

To assume that a Chernobyl-scale event will never happen with a modern nuclear reactor is optimistic and in my opinion foolish.

[Aileron]

Oh yeah, reduce energy consumption. Population is rising and you think their needs are going to diminish over time? I mean, people have energy bills at the end of the month. Do you think they are like "wow I only spent $300 for utilities, I should try to get that up to $500 next month"? Everyone wants to reduce consumption but as population and technology is rising its not going to happen.

 

 

Back to Chernobyl...

 

Take the example of somebody driving 150 mph down the highway, not making a turn and dying in a horrific crash. Would such an example indicate that the highway needs to be redesigned or that the car model needs to recalled? Certainly not. Would it mean that if someone else drove the same car on the same highway, but this time at the posted speed limit it would be "optimistic and foolish" to think that person will probably make the turn?

 

If the safety standards aren't followed, its not the technologies' fault. Its also not an indicator of what will happen if the standards are followed.

 

They weren't testing anything except how fast their reactor would go and how much plutonium they could produce.

 

Almost all Nuclear reactors run at about 2 or 3 cycles per second. This was true for every sustainable nuclear reactor in history except Chernobyl. That reactor ran on the order of some thousand cycles per second. No person can react fast enough to stop the reaction if problem arise at the rate Chernobyl was going. No computer could either.

 

I mean, its like that guy who strapped a rocket engine to his car and accidentally ran into a cliff.

 

Remember, this was the Soviet Union. I know that means nothing to you, but. They never developed nuclear technology. They merely stole it from us. They barely understood the technology, let alone what they were messing with. I mean, the US at the time didn't know what we were messing with, and the Soviets were worse off than we were. They did all sorts of !@#$%^&*anine things with nuclear technology. For example, they built small devices and distributed them to farmers in hopes that irradiated crops produce higher yeilds.

[MonteZuma]

Oh yeah, reduce energy consumption.  Population is rising and you think their needs are going to diminish over time?

Yes. With sufficient investment in technology, we can cut our demand fro energy dramatically.

 

I mean, people have energy bills at the end of the month.  Do you think they are like "wow I only spent $300 for utilities, I should try to get that up to $500 next month"?  Everyone wants to reduce consumption but as population and technology is rising its not going to happen.

Electricity, fuel and other consumables like water are so cheap in wealthy industrialised countries that people, in general, don't care about additional consumption. The SUV craze that swept the US is a classic example. Every electrical appliance in my home has low efficiency. I bought them because electricity and water is so cheap, I would have never recouped the cost of a more efficient but expensive appliance in energy or water savings.

 

The reason energy and water is so cheap is that the environmental cost is not factored into the price.

 

Back to Chernobyl...

 

They weren't testing anything except how fast their reactor would go and how much plutonium they could produce.

That is just a wild conspiracy theory. See this TIME article for the facts as they are still known today.

 

They barely understood the technology, let alone what they were messing with.  I mean, the US at the time didn't know what we were messing with, and the Soviets were worse off than we were.

Of course they knew what they were dealing with. But everyone knows the soviets took more risks that the Americans. That was one of the consequences of the arms race.

 

They did all sorts of !@#$%^&*anine things with nuclear technology.  For example, they built small devices and distributed them to farmers in hopes that irradiated crops produce higher yeilds.

Every nuclear nation did !@#$%^&*anine thjings the nuclear technology.

 

What makes you think the future will be different?

[Aileron]

Actually, I'm pretty sure mankind is done with doing !@#$%^&*anine things with nuclear technology, we will have to wait until we invent something else so we can do !@#$%^&*anine things with THAT technology. (I can name examples, but that would be just asking to take us off topic.)

 

 

Besides, that's a completely seperate animal that nuclear power plants. Do you think that if there are no power plants that it would prevent seed irradiators from being built? If the technology is going to be used in an !@#$%^&*anine fashion, oppose it when its being used in an !@#$%^&*anine fashion, not when its being put to proven and practical use.

 

 

 

I guess you are right...I don't believe the story that the Soviets gave. I guess if not believing what the Soviet Union said when they were beginning to look bad makes one a conspiracy theorist, then I am a conspiracy theorist.

 

Any worker who so much as thinks of disabling a safety system in any First-world power plant would be fired on the spot. These workers were likely ordered to do these things, otherwise they wouldn't have considered it. Notice how all the people they blamed were dead. It wasn't the archaic equipment or the people calling the shots, it was the dead workers.

 

You are very strange Monte...on one hand you don't trust the decent, intellectual, and hard-working engineers who run all the quality power plants in the world, yet on the the other hand you take the stuff the Soviet government was saying as gospel.

 

 

Besides, do you know why solar panels aren't used? Chiefly because they are expensive. Then why are they so expensive? They are expensive because they take a lot of heat and energy to produce, to the point that anything large enough to meet largescale needs would probably require more energy to construct than the product would give over its expected lifetime.

[MasterDrake]

I gonna put solar panels on mah house, for real look they may be espensive but you get your money back from them and they last a while if u keep them clean.

[MonteZuma]

Actually, I'm pretty sure mankind is done with doing !@#$%^&*anine things with nuclear technology, we will have to wait until we invent something else so we can do !@#$%^&*anine things with THAT technology.  (I can name examples, but that would be just asking to take us off topic.)

Mark my words. There will be more nuclear disasters.

 

I guess you are right...I don't believe the story that the Soviets gave.

You don't need to believe the Soviet excuse. That article was written in 1986 and it is still the accepted version of events in the west. Read the report. It says:

 

"most [Westerners] were impressed by [the report's] thoroughness, its spirit of self-criticism and the promptness with which it was prepared".

 

That quote was from a senior analyst at the Washington office of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group that has been critical of the nuclear-power industry. He then says

 

''I must confess that I think we know more at this stage about Chernobyl than was the case four months after Three Mile Island,''.

 

Almost 20 years later, that report is still accepted as the definitive account of what happened at Chernobyl. If only the Bush and Blair WMD dossiers stood the test of time like the Chenobyl report did.

 

I guess if not believing what the Soviet Union said when they were beginning to look bad makes one a conspiracy theorist, then I am a conspiracy theorist.

When it flies in the face of western scientific opinion, it is a whacky conspiracy theory.

 

Any worker who so much as thinks of disabling a safety system in any First-world power plant would be fired on the spot.

The communist system and power/authority structure was partly responsible for the tragedy. Soviet workers could not publicly criticise authority the way western workers can. But the engineer responsible wasn't just fired. He was jailed.

 

These workers were likely ordered to do these things, otherwise they wouldn't have considered it.  Notice how all the people they blamed were dead.  It wasn't the archaic equipment or the people calling the shots, it was the dead workers.

They aren't dead. In fact the engineer was jailed on the basis of eyewitness accounts of what happened in the control room. There was also an extensive paper trail that proved that the engineer did not do what he was ordered to do.

 

You are very strange Monte...on one hand you don't trust the decent, intellectual, and hard-working engineers who run all the quality power plants in the world, yet on the the other hand you take the stuff the Soviet government was saying as gospel.

I don't trust the technology or the operator of any power plant anywhere in the world.

 

What makes you think that the operator of a power plant in the US is any more decent, intellectual or hard-working than a Soviet or Russian engineer?

 

My views on Chernobyl aren't based on a Soviet report. They are based on the balance of scientific opinion in the western world. You've chosen to ignore that and accept a baseless conspiracy theory.

 

Besides, do you know why solar panels aren't used?

I don't think solar panels are the answer to our energy needs. But designing appliances than run on them might be useful because it will help us develop energy efficient appliances that can cope with an intermittant power supply. That could lead to better battery technology. Solar power won't cure anything. But it will help.

[Dav]

as far as saving energy goes superconductors are a promising line of research, we wase excessivge amounts of energy passing power through power wia convertion to heat.

 

Problem is they need to be at rediculas tempratures to work but hopefully soon something will come of it.

 

It is true that wind in some instances is unreliable but there are some areas where there is an almost consistant wind e.g the atlantic drift, why should we not exploit that? The only thing likly to turn something like that off is global warming effects so in this case going green saves your energy source.

[Aileron]

Look, the Soviets flat out admitted they did things that nobody else would even consider. Its not a baseless conspiracy theory, the base of it is that its the Soviet Union, which has a reputation for lying. If I'm wrong its a case of the "boy who cried wolf".

 

People were impressed with the Soviets honesty because this case they were speaking half-truths when they previously flat out lied. When it comes to scientific opinion, it became clear that looking into Soviet lies was a waste of time because they knew how to cover their tracks.

 

I trust first world power plant operators because they don't do the things the Soviets admitted, and certainly not whatever the Soviets didn't admit. You don't disengage safety systems while the reactor is running. That's rule one in any power plant operational guidebook. Rule two is to tell the controll room what you are doing, so there was ample opportunity for it to click in big cheese's head: wait, that's the fifth safety system we disabled in X hours, isn't this kinda dangerous? Even if you believe the Soviets they are STILL grade AA morons who did something that happens nowhere else in the world.

 

You watch too much of "the Simpsons". In real life, Mr. Burns would be in jail, Lenny and Carl MIGHT be qualified to wash the toilets, and Homer Simpson would be ground up into parking lot cement. The REAL nuclear industry is smarter than NASA and has much fewer accidents, and most "nuclear accidents" are really zero casualty misses that got too close for comfort. These people are only human in appearance and that they occasionally require food and sleep. Other than that, they are workaholic robots that piss off their families constantly. Trust me, I know.

 

 

This is the only time I will say this so you probably will want to quote it and take a picture: France is doing the intelligent thing in this issue. Compaired to inneffective solar and wind power and pollution making fossil fuels (coal plants emit more radiation than nuclear plants do btw) trusting extremely nerdy workaholics to keep something inside 10 meter thick dome of reinforced concrete that can make a 747 bounce off of it isn't that much of a risk.

 

I am an American praising France on a particular issue. That almost is a sign of the apocalypse, and I'm pretty sure the temperature in !@#$%^&* just dropped a few degrees. If a bunch of Frenchies managed to get my support on an issue, they have to be right.

[MonteZuma]

Look, the Soviets flat out admitted they did things that nobody else would even consider.  Its not a baseless conspiracy theory, the base of it is that its the Soviet Union, which has a reputation for lying.  If I'm wrong its a case of the "boy who cried wolf".

The fact that the boy cried wolf is not a justification for ignoring western scientific opinion. Which part of the TIME magazine article about the Soviet report do you think contains errors or falsehoods, and where is your evidence?

 

People were impressed with the Soviets honesty because this case they were speaking half-truths when they previously flat out lied.  When it comes to scientific opinion, it became clear that looking into Soviet lies was a waste of time because they knew how to cover their tracks.

Actually they've never been good at covering their tracks.

 

Even if you believe the Soviets they are STILL grade AA morons who did something that happens nowhere else in the world.

It does happen elsewhere in the world. Three Mile Island happened just 7 years before Chernobyl. The Chernobyl melt-down happened because a safety action that should have caused the reactor to cool actually had the opposite effect. At three Mile Island, there were at least three system failures. A malfunction in a secondary cooling circuit, then a malfunction in a relief valve, and then poorly designed instrumentation that did not reports the status of the relief valve, and then leaking compressors. Another reason that the partial meltdown occured was inadequate emergency response training.

 

You watch too much of "the Simpsons".

Actually, my information comes from sources like TIME, NRC, UCS, UIC, and ANSTO. But in the end I make up my own mind.

 

most "nuclear accidents" are really zero casualty misses that got too close for comfort.

Exactly. They are too close for comfort. A similar accident at any other type of power station wouldn't cause me to lose sleep.

 

These people are only human in appearance

They are human. They and the equipment they use are not infallible.

 

to keep something inside 10 meter thick dome of reinforced concrete that can make a 747 bounce off of it isn't that much of a risk.

Famous last words.

 

I have no doubt that nuclear reactors in the western world are amongst the safest pieces of complex equipment that have ever been constructed. But the fact remains that uranium is toxic. Nuclear waste is very toxic. An unforseen mishap involving a nuclear reactor can have long lasting and devastating impact over a very wide area involving millions of people.

 

I'd rather risk being hit on the head by a faulty solar panel or wind turbine, or pay a few extra bucks to get more fuel efficient electric appliance.

[makavelilikepac]

In Soviet Russia, nuclear waste is YOU!

[Dav]

makavelilikepac dont spam political, its a waste of everyones time.

 

 

 

Nucular power has so many saftey measures that an accident is near impossible. It doesnt mean it IS impossible, one mistake could cause a problem.

 

The toxisity issue of the biggest problem as well as the dumping of warm water into the waterways killing much of the aquatic population in the area.

 

The thing to remember is that nucular power is still a young technology as far as these things go and there is myuch to be done to improve it. I just hope they either sort the wate problem soon or find green replacements.

[Aileron]

Actually the warm waterways make good fishing spots in the winter and late fall. I've stood in the water and know why, in the winter it make the water a comfortable temperature that was kinda hard to climb out of actually. I'm sure it might be worse closer to the source, but fish are smart enough to stay away if it gets too hot. Generally, the fish probably view it as a vacation area. Gysers and hot springs are naturally occurring phenomna that do more damage, because they raise temperature and add sulfur. As long as we don't do too much we will be fine.

 

In the grand scheme of things, it shouldn't count for nothing, the air pollution caused by coal power or the deforestation and land consumption that would be caused by solar power does far more damage than warm water.

 

 

 

For clarification, I think the Soviet Union rushed the people in the power plants with impossible to fulfill deadlines possibly because they wanted to make a plutonium factory out of it. The evidence of this is the design of the reactor, the way it was run, and all the things the workers did in a short time period.

 

Remember the time the article was published. The Soviets only admitted they had a nuclear meltdown after all of Europe's radiation detectors were going haywire and US spy satellites had taken pictures of a burning power plant.

 

They were great at covering their tracks, though it does not seem like it now. After their collapse a lot was revealed that was not known the time that article was published.

 

Three Mile Island was a near-miss...no radiation was leaked and no evidence of radiation leakage has been noticed in the area since then. That puts this "disaster" behind the radiation from cigarette smoke, buring fossil fuels, and being in front of a computer monitor.

 

Most of nuclear waste comes from medicine anyways. While there are a few power plants here and there, virtually every decent hospital has a nuclear medicine facility and thus produces nuclear waste. Since a lot of times this is life-saving medicine, we can't really get rid of this. So, we will need to develop a way of getting rid of the stuff regardless. Since solar power plants can only become viable "with development", it is reasonable to permit that we develop a solution to this problem, especially given that we have to solve waste problems with nuclear medicine anyway.

 

 

The problems with solar are rarely discussed. They require large amounts of land area. Pro solar people love to cite how life on Earth is powered by a solar reaction. However, which percentage of land area is covered by plantlife? Virtually all of the land area is covered by plants, whether it be grass bushes, or trees, and the amount of land area we need for solar power is roughly the same. We would need to destroy lots of evironments just to get the land area.

 

Solar panels require silicon for construction, and this means lots of silicon, and this means major mining operations. If we were to impliment solar power, the mining necessary would quickly surp!@#$%^&* iron mining, and I don't know if the Earth even has that much silicon...after all, this planet is made out of iron, not silicon.

 

Yes, nuclear power requires Uranium, but not nearly as much due to E=mc2. With a nuclear reaction, we only need a tiny amount of energy to produce a lot of heat.

 

Generally though, a few nuclear power plants will produce a continent's worth of solar panels while consuming the land area similar to a small town.

 

 

Solar power is really one of those things that can reduce energy consumption, but can't really provide power.

 

Your approval of solar panels is simple...they are expensive. Thus, you automatically assume that the reason people don't use them is to be cheap smucks, though that is not the case. The reason they are expensive is because they require a lot of material, energy, and land area to construct, which each translates into environmental damage.

 

 

Oh, and trust me, those who run power plants are NOT human. They have plenty of faults socially, but I can't imagine them making mistakes at work anymore...remember, after TMI there were huge reforms in the industry.

 

(BTW, my father works for the NRC, so you can say my information comes from them.)

[MonteZuma]

Actually the warm waterways make good fishing spots in the winter and late fall.  I've stood in the water and know why, in the winter it make the water a comfortable temperature that was kinda hard to climb out of actually.  I'm sure it might be worse closer to the source, but fish are smart enough to stay away if it gets too hot.  Generally, the fish probably view it as a vacation area.

Yes. And the seals in antarctica are happy about the hole in the ozone layer because they get a tan more easily. Seriously, what is good for you or one or two other species is not always good for an ecosystem. Messing with stream and lake temperatures is bad. There is an abundance if scientific evidence that says so.

 

For clarification, I think the Soviet Union rushed the people in the power plants with impossible to fulfill deadlines possibly because they wanted to make a plutonium factory out of it.  The evidence of this is the design of the reactor, the way it was run, and all the things the workers did in a short time period.

Have you got any links or references that demonstrate this?

 

Remember the time the article was published.  The Soviets only admitted they had a nuclear meltdown after all of Europe's radiation detectors were going haywire and US spy satellites had taken pictures of a burning power plant.

The Soviets were always secretive about disasters !@#$%^&*ociated with the misuse of their technology. This was normal Soviet practice. But the simple dfact is, that do!@#$%^&*ent has stood the test of time. All the evidence still supports its conclusions.

 

Three Mile Island was a near-miss...no radiation was leaked and no evidence of radiation leakage has been noticed in the area since then.  That puts this "disaster" behind the radiation from cigarette smoke, buring fossil fuels, and being in front of a computer monitor.

Actually radiation was leaked. Everyone within 10 miles of the reactor got the equivalent of a chest xray that day. Some people got the equivalent of 12.5 x-rays in one day. There is no safe level of exposure to ionising radiation. Any exposure can lead to malignancy. In any case, as you say, this was a near miss. Next time it might not miss.

 

Most of nuclear waste comes from medicine anyways.

In terms of volume, but not in terms of its threat to human health and the environment. Most waste !@#$%^&*ociated with nuclear medicine is low level waste. Most of the nasty stuff that makes the news is !@#$%^&*ociated with weapons and nuclear energy production. You only need a very small nuclear reactor to provide nuclear medicine.

 

Yes, nuclear power requires Uranium, but not nearly as much due to E=mc2.  With a nuclear reaction, we only need a tiny amount of energy to produce a lot of heat.

Yes. But a thimble full of plutonium can kill thousands of people.

 

(BTW, my father works for the NRC, so you can say my information comes from them.)

that explains your bias

[Aileron]

How so?..the NRC REGULATES nuclear power...if my father had stock in Westinghouse, sure, but...

 

12.5 x-rays in one day? I've seen doctors order that many, not on a routine basis, but...

 

I don't know which statistic to quote, but the average radiation emission of a coal power plant per month is greater than the radiation emission of TMI.

 

What abundence of scientific evidence? The whole thought process on thermal pollution is that it changes the envronment so it can't be good. I mean, its sound, but still thermal pollution is trivial. I'll take a bit of thermal pollution over air pollution or deforestation any day.

 

How did the article stand the test of time? All it did was be published in 1983 and hasn't deleted itself since that time. I remember seeing a TIME article after the USS Cole bombing saying Bin Laden would be captured in a few months. It hasn't happened, though I could show you the article. Would it imply that if I showed you the 5 year old article that it "stood the test of time" and that the information inside is correct? If I got my hands of a 400 year old do!@#$%^&*ent saying that the world is flat, would the fact that the paper survived 400 years imply that the information on it is credible?

 

There are some things people discuss in publications and some things people don't. Any distrust of the Soviet Union wasn't going to be published without proof. And since I don't have any spies working for me, I can't provide the proof either. The only people who would have proof of that are the intelligence agencies and they don't publish their findings in magazines.

 

So, those in our position are left to the unscientific method of guessing. Neither of us have the resources to prove anything and you know it.

 

All I can say is from what I have heard on how power plants are operated, that story is false.

[X`terrania]

I heard Kyoto is in Japan.

[Phyran]

Well what about blackouts like the one caused by a power plant failure a couple of years ago during summer?

 

we rely too much on nuclear power, or rather electricity....

if you leave in a big skyscraper building you are screwed especially if the water pump is powered by electricity too

[GENERAL_SLAYER]

ummm those blackouts were my falut

[Aileron]

Well, generally that blackout was caused by lack of power plants. Alot of wierd things occurred that day, all technology and operators did what they were supposed to, the problem was caused by the fast that the supply of power just barely reached demand, and when one powerplant shut down, there wasn't enough power to go around. Power plant's are themselves dependant upon the power grid...their instruments are not run off of their own turbines. So, the the powergrid couldn't supply power, the electronic regulating equipment turned off, and when the equipment turned off, the reactors were shut down automatically. It simply takes a couple days to get a reactor up and running again.

[MonteZuma]

How so?..the NRC REGULATES nuclear power...

Exactly. He can never argue that the use of nuclear power is an unacceptable risk or that current regulatory measures are insufficient. that wouldn't be good for his career.

 

12.5 x-rays in one day?  I've seen doctors order that many, not on a routine basis, but...

Yes. That is what you get when there is a near miss.

 

I don't know which statistic to quote, but the average radiation emission of a coal power plant per month is greater than the radiation emission of TMI.

On a good day maybe. Not if you were at TMI or Chernobyl on the wrong day though. In any case, lets eventually try and close down coal power plants too!

 

What abundence of scientific evidence?  The whole thought process on thermal pollution is that it changes the envronment so it can't be good.  I mean, its sound, but still thermal pollution is trivial.  I'll take a bit of thermal pollution over air pollution or deforestation any day.

It is not trivial at the local level. I'd rather have neither.

 

How did the article stand the test of time?

It has stood the test of time because there is no evidence disputing any of the basic premises. If there is evidence, present it.

 

Any distrust of the Soviet Union wasn't going to be published without proof.

Speculation based on fact is published without proof all the time, even in science journals. That is why we need to read widely and amke up our own mind. Remember the distrust of the Iraqi government that was published without proof?

 

  And since I don't have any spies working for me, I can't provide the proof either.  The only people who would have proof of that are the intelligence agencies and they don't publish their findings in magazines.

You are being silly. If we needed to have our own 'spy' present before we could comment on an issue, we'd never discuss anything, and we'd be forced to believe everything our government told us. Eh comrade?

 

There is an abundance of expert commentary on almost every issue imaginable. Some of this is based on intelligent, critical analysis of the facts at hand. Seek it out and you'll find it.

 

So, those in our position are left to the unscientific method of guessing.  Neither of us have the resources to prove anything and you know it.

The traditional scientific method is all about guesses. A scientist makes a guess (aka hypothesis) and then spends time trying to prove that it is untrue. Our scientist will publish his ideas and give other scientists an opportunity to review his ideas and disprove them if possible. The longer his idea stands up to these tests the more credibility is given to the hypothesis.

 

That is why the TIME article, and more importantly the Soviet review paper, is still relevant today. In fact it is even more credible today than it was when it was published.

[Phyran]

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/TECH/03/30/spa....car/index.html

[Aileron]

Well, that was the point Monte, neither one of us has spies, so we have to trust our governments.

 

Yes, speculation is published all the time in the media today when they are 90% sure. Like OJ Simpson killing his wife or the Pope being shot by the Soviets. This is about 60% sure....as I said though, either way they did something extremely stupid that doesn't happen in western power plants.

 

If you knew my father, you would know this at!@#$%^&*ude is not biased at all. He has a stick shoved so far up his !@#$%^&* that he has to push the top end of it out of the way to swallow food. He walks around spouting logic and science as the solution to all problems pretty much like Spock, and like Spock he has managed to get on every last nerve of everyone around him except his co-workers. His only flaw that means something in the workplace is that he cannot admit mistakes when he makes them. However, he LOVES to point out any mistake someone else makes.

 

If the nuclear industry is filled with people like him, there can't be any problems, except that somewhere there's a room withed with high-strung !@#$%^&*holes argueing with each other. They rarely make mistakes, and if they do, ten co-workers jump down their throughts about it. They don't do anything without giving the entire situation a strict overanalysis. They don't change a lightbulb, they study a lightbulb, theorise on the best way to remove the lightbulb, meet and discuss the ways to change a lightbulb, and only after that they change the lightbulb. If that's the way they change lightbulbs...how could they possibly forget to turn the switch off? If one dared to miss it in the meeting, the people he's meeting with would love nothing more than to get in his face about it.

 

And Monte...X-rays don't give that much radiation. They are rigged to flash...kinda like a camera flash. X-rays themselves are not really radiation, though they are the closest thing to it on the electromagnetic spectrum. So, we got low energy radiation and we are flashing it in nearly an instantaneous amount of time...that isn't very much exposure. 12.5 X-rays worth of radiation can be NATURAL...you will probably recieve that much watching a solar flare or who-knows-what from cosmic sources. Generally, health guidelines for recieving that kind of radiation are to just avoid any more radiation for a few days.

 

The only times X-rays caused people health problems was when they were used everywhere...like shoe stores and barber shops...kids who thought it was cool were getting X-rays effectively (they didn't flash the X-rays back then) several hundred times a day.

[MonteZuma]

Well, that was the point Monte, neither one of us has spies, so we have to trust our governments.

We don't have to trust our governments.

 

Yes, speculation is published all the time in the media today when they are 90% sure.  Like OJ Simpson killing his wife or the Pope being shot by the Soviets.  This is about 60% sure....as I said though, either way they did something extremely stupid that doesn't happen in western power plants.

Extremely stupid things happen everywhere.

 

If you knew my father, you would know this at!@#$%^&*ude is not biased at all.  He has a stick shoved so far up his !@#$%^&* that he has to push the top end of it out of the way to swallow food.  He walks around spouting logic and science as the solution to all problems pretty much like Spock, and like Spock he has managed to get on every last nerve of everyone around him except his co-workers.  His only flaw that means something in the workplace is that he cannot admit mistakes when he makes them.  However, he LOVES to point out any mistake someone else makes.

I have no doubt that your father is a very professional man that understands the facts and believes in what he does. But clever people that have the same sets of facts can always interpret them differently. Or.... people with the same facts can have a different at!@#$%^&*ude to risk and risk management. What people define as an acceptable risk is not based just on science. The example that I always use is the weather forecast. If the best scientifi minds tell you that the chance of rain is 50%, it is up to you to decide whether or not it is worthwhile taking an umbrella.

 

The only times X-rays caused people health problems was when they were used everywhere...like shoe stores and barber shops...kids who thought it was cool were getting X-rays effectively (they didn't flash the X-rays back then) several hundred times a day.

Doctor's stuffed up with x-rays back then too. The difference between the shoe salesman and the doctor or scientist isn't all that great. Scientists get things wrong all the time - and the consequences of their errors can be huge. There is no reason why anybody should think that they will not make mistakes again and again and again.

 

Having said all of that, I agree that 12 x-rays isn't a great amount of exposure over the course of a lifetime. My real concern with nuclear energy is this risk of worse disasters, the effects of uranium mining and the intractable waste that the industry generates. Not to mention the geopolitical issues !@#$%^&*ociated with the proliferation of the technology.