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Nuclear Reactor Design Chosen - Not Because It Was Safe - But Because It Worked On Navy Submarines
Virtually all
of the nuclear reactors in the U.S. are of the same archaic design as
those at Fukushima (Indeed, MSNBC notes that there are 23 U.S. reactors
which are more or less identical to those at Fukushima.)
Called "light-water reactors", this design was not chosen for safety reasons. Rather, it was chosen because it worked in Navy submarines.
Specifically, as the Atlantic reported in March:
In the early years of atomic power, as recounted by Alvin Weinberg, head of Oak Ridge National Laboratory in his book The First Nuclear Era, there was intense competition to come up with the cheapest, safest, best nuclear reactor design.
Every
variable in building an immensely complex industrial plant was up for
grabs: the nature of the radioactive fuel and other substances that
form the reactor's core, the safety systems, the containment buildings,
the construction substances, and everything else that might go into
building an immensely complex industrial plant. The light water reactor
became the technological victor, but no one is quite sure whether that
was a good idea.
Few of these alternatives were seriously
investigated after light water reactors were selected for Navy
submarines by Admiral Hyman Rickover. Once light water reactors gained
government backing and the many advantages that conferred, other
designs could not break into the market, even though commercial nuclear
power wouldn't explode for years after Rickover's decision. "There
were lots and lots of ideas floating around, and they essentially lost
when light water came to dominate," University of Strasbourg professor
Robin Cowan told the Boston Globe in an excellent article on "technological lock-in" in the nuclear industry.
As
it turned out, there were real political and corporate imperatives to
commercialize nuclear power with whatever designs were already to hand.
It was geopolitically useful for the United States to show they could
offer civilian nuclear facilities to its allies and the companies who
built the plants (mainly GE and Westinghouse) did not want to lose the
competitive advantage they'd gained as the contractors on the Manhattan
Project. Those companies stood to make much more money on nuclear
plants than traditional fossil fuel-based plants, and they had less
competitors. The invention and use of the atomic bomb weighed heavily
on the minds of nuclear scientists. Widespread nuclear power was about
the only thing that could redeem their role in the creation of the
first weapon with which it was possible to destroy life on earth. In
other words, the most powerful interest groups surrounding the nuclear
question all wanted to settle on a power plant design and start
building.
***
President Lyndon Johnson and his
administration sent the message that we were going to use nuclear
power, and it would be largely through the reactor designs that already
existed, regardless of whether they had the best safety
characteristics that could be imagined. We learned in later years that
boiling water reactors like Fukushima are subject to certain types of
failure under very unusual circumstances, but we probably would have
discovered such problems if we'd explored the technical designs for
longer before trying to start building large numbers of nuclear plants.
The Atomic Energy Commission's first general manager - MIT professor Carroll Wilson - confirmed in 1979:
The
pressurized water reactor was peculiarly suitable and necessary for a
submarine power plant where limitations of space and wieght were
extreme. So as interest in the civilian use of nuclear power began to
grow, it was natural to consider a system that had already proven
reliable in submarines. This was further encouraged by the fact that
the Atomic Energy Commission provided funds to build the first civilian
nuclear power plant ... using essentially the same system as the
submarine power plant. Thus it was that a pressurized light water
system became the standard model for the world. Although other kinds of
reactors were under development in different countries, there was a
rapid scale-up of of the pressurized water reactor and a variant called
the boiling water reactor developed by General Electric. These became
the standard types for civilian power plants. in the United States and
were licensed to be built in France, Germany, Japan and elsewhere.If
one had started to design a civilian electric power plant without the
constraints of weight and space as required by the submarine, quite
different criteria would apply.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard argues that there was another reason why all safer alternative designs - including thorium reactors - were abandoned:
The plans were shelved because thorium does not produce plutonium for bombs.
As Boing Boing notes:
Reactors
like this [are] flawed in some ways that would be almost comical, were
it not for the risk those flaws impart. Maybe you've wondered over the
past couple of weeks why anyone would design a nuclear reactor that
relied on external generators to power the pumps for it's emergency
cooling system. In a real emergency, isn't there a decent chance that
the backup generators would be compromised, as well?
It's a
good question. In fact, modern reactor designs have solved that very
problem, by feeding water through the emergency cooling system using
gravity, rather than powered pumps. Newer designs are much safer, and
more reliable. But we haven't built any of them in the United States
...
Not the Navy's Fault
This is in no way a criticism of the U.S. Navy or its submarine reactors. As a reader comments:
There are some things to know about Navy reactors:
- They don't store thirty years worth of used, spent fuel rods next to the reactor.
- They don't continue to operate a reactor that had a design life of 25 years for 60 years.
- The spent fuel pool is back on land on a base somewhere.
(In
addition, the reactors on subs are much smaller than commercial
reactors, and so have almost no consequences for the civilian population
if they meltdown. And if an accident were to happen on a nuclear sub,
the sub would likely sink or at least flood, presumably keeping the
reactor from melting down in the first place.)
There Are No Independent Regulators and No Real Safety Standards
But at least the government compensates for the
inherently unsafe design of American reactors by requiring high safety
and maintenance standards.
Unfortunately, no ...
As AP notes today:
Federal
regulators have been working closely with the nuclear power industry
to keep the nation’s aging reactors operating within safety standards
by repeatedly weakening those standards or simply failing to enforce
them.***
Examples abound. When valves leaked, more
leakage was allowed — up to 20 times the original limit. When rampant
cracking caused radioactive leaks from steam generator tubing, an
easier test of the tubes was devised so plants could meet standards.
***
Records
show a recurring pattern: reactor parts or systems fall out of
compliance with the rules; studies are conducted by the industry and
government; and all agree that existing standards are “unnecessarily
conservative.’’
Regulations are loosened, and the reactors are back in compliance.
Of course, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission - like all nuclear "agencies" worldwide - is 100% captured and not an independent agency, and the NRC has never denied a request for relicensing old, unsafe nuclear plants.
Indeed, Senator Sanders says that the NRC pressured the Department of Justice to sue the state of Vermont
after the state and its people rejected relicensing of the Vermont
Yankee plant, siding with the nuclear operator instead. The Nation notes:
Aileen
Mioko Smith, director of Green Action Kyoto, met Fukushima plant
and government officials in August 2010. “At the plant they seemed
to dismiss our concerns about spent fuel pools,” said Mioko Smith.
“At the prefecture, they were very worried but had no plan for how
to deal with it.”
Remarkably, that is the norm—both in Japan and
in the United States. Spent fuel pools at Fukushima are not equipped
with backup water-circulation systems or backup generators for the
water-circulation system they do have.
The exact same design flaw is in place at Vermont Yankee, a nuclear plant of the same GE design as the Fukushima reactors.
At Fukushima each reactor has between 60 and 83 tons of spent fuel
rods stored next to them. Vermont Yankee has a staggering 690 tons of spent fuel rods on site.
Nuclear
safety activists in the United States have long known of these
problems and have sought repeatedly to have them addressed. At least
get backup generators for the pools, they implored. But at every turn
the industry has pushed back, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
(NRC) has consistently ruled in favor of plant owners over local
communities.
After 9/11 the issue of spent fuel rods again had
momentary traction. Numerous citizen groups petitioned and pressured
the NRC for enhanced protections of the pools. But the NRC deemed
“the possibility of a terrorist attack...speculative and simply too
far removed from the natural or expected consequences of agency
action.” So nothing was done—not even the provision of backup
water-circulation systems or emergency power-generation systems.
As an example of how dangerous American nuclear reactors are, AP noted in a report Friday that 75 percent of all U.S. nuclear sites have leaked radioactive tritium.
Indeed, because of poor design, horrible safety practices, and no real regulation, a U.S. nuclear accident could be a lot worse than Fukushima.
- advertisements -
"TECHNOLOGICAL LOCK-IN" -
"It was geopolitically useful for the United States to show they could offer civilian nuclear facilities to its allies and the companies who built the plants (mainly GE and Westinghouse) did not want to lose the competitive advantage they'd gained as the contractors on the Manhattan Project. Those companies stood to make much more money on nuclear plants than traditional fossil fuel-based plants, and they had less competitors..."
what a PERFECT description of how (so-called) TITANS of "FREE MARKET ENTERPRISE" and global "CAPITALISM" - in this case corp giants & Wall St shining stars GE & Westinghouse - BENEFIT from billions upon billions of dollars of BIG GOVERNMENT very "socialized" SPENDING, duh!
(in this case, the billions of WWII era dollars that Uncle Sam made producing uranium, plutonium & devloping A-bomb during the "Manhatten Project")
when "Con-servatives" start getting red in face, and foaming at the mouth, touting how their brand of "free market capitalism" is "SUPERIOR" to other forms of economic guidance, they overlook & whitewash how PROXIMITY to POWER & BIG government spending are often THE determining factors between success and failure for "private" companies & contractors...
More importantly, the uranium based nuclear power fuel cycle was chosen over the vastly better for so many reasons thorium cycle beacuse the uranium route had a common infrastructure with nuclear bomb production while the thorium route did not.
It's long past time to change that.
Zerohedge should change the name to whinybitchyamericans.com. GW is typical one, crying wolf at least seven times per day.
Now, now. GW loves the hits. A year ago he was rehashing the brilliant work of amateur armchair internet sleuths who were screaming about a second BP well filling the Gulf and citing experts like "Dr. Tom" and Bob Naiman, who made a jar of water explode that luckily just happened to be on cam. Pump and dump.
Another aspect was the risk-averse culture of utilities meant they wanted something that someone else was already using, and all the better if it was endorsed by the US gov't. Then there was the factor that the technicians who had run Navy reactors became available for employment as operators when they left the service. Lastly, I suspect the regulators in gov't also needed a design that had already been endorsed and that there were people with some operating experience who could work in oversight and inspection.
Now we have the prospect of some walk-away-safe designs and look at the problems they are having in getting regulatory approval. I read one source who said that the NRC was incapable of approving a non-standard design. We can cite the risk-averse nature of utilities, but we must also cite the risk-averse nature of the federal regulatory bureaucracy as well.
Nothing that bad about PWR - BWR however seems a dead duck.
Most capital intensive engineering solutions of the 20th century were military based anyhow - nothing new here.
Space rockets are still based on this design for the most part
www.astronautix.com/lvs/a9a11a12.htm
However if you continued to give capital to your Germans rather then retreating to the comforts of soap opera the design could nave been perfected
www.astronautix.com/lvs/satrnc5n.htm
Its all about wether you use capital for consumption today or investment for tommorow.
As long as you have competent enginners who endeavour to keep it simple stupid as much as is practically possible anything is possible.
Maybe this ultimate expression in chemical rocket ambition was the way to go.
One launch would orbit the entire mass of the ISS without dozens of individually cheaper but ultimately more expensive launches.
Without elan & ambition you ain't got nothing.
www.astronautix.com/lvs/saturnvd.htm
No Bucks no Buck Rogers
Dork,
Right you are. The most revolutionary energy technology of the past 100 years>natural gas turbines. These allowed for industrial on-site power generation ('inside the fence') which in turn began to both decrease the scale economies and allow for customers to escape monopoly utility franchises (competitive exit), which led to the deregulation/restructuring wave.
In addition, gas turbines allowed the development of combined-cycle power systems, using the front end turbine in combo with a back end exhaust boiler. Twice the power, half the fuel.
Remember that nuclear reactors literally throw away 2/3 of the heat energy after they....boil water. Once. NOT efficient.
What, then, is a gas turbine? Nothing more in essence than a jet engine.
Military and aerospace R&D, in the trillions most likely, creating technology to change the 'facts on the ground'.
So....any fuel you can get into a combined-cycle power system will be reliable, base load power and if it is a renewable fuel....you get the idea. In combination with other forms of power (yes, even nuclear may get a slice kids), it's one more piece of the PORTFOLIO which is ultimately the key word in energy. Supply and demand portfolio management.
Not a silver bullet, but a sensible way to think about the problem.
Yes Jim.
A interesting story is the development of the Bristol Olympus Turbojet - still the most effecient turbojet on the planet (turbojets work more efficiently at supersonic speeds then turbofans)
When the contract came to develop the RAF TSR-2 it was found that the estimated radius of the aircraft would only reach roughly 900 miles but the specification was for 1000 miles - so the enginners of the day who were not compromised much by cost given their WW II heritage continued to pump vast amounts of money into the last few miles - but they got to their spec.
Such capital cost inputs would not be considered "efficient" now - but without such efforts no real technological development can occur.
Those engines eventually went into the Concorde.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Olympus
My point is that some % of a economy cannot be cost constrained.
The efficiencies in modern economies are almost all due to redundancy elimination and are not real technological leaps.
Nixons burning of the Apollo ships to create "cost effectiveness" is the most dramatic example - it just destroyed productivity and industrial potential on a massive scale.
Indeed Denninger latest net energy negative graph is a indicator of the malaise with the process accelerating post 1980.
GW,
please disseminate. highly recommended to all my zh peeps.
http://metanoia-films.org/psywar.php
watch a free film on propaganda 2010 release i believe.
Liquid Fluorine Thorium Reactors can actually burn spent fuel rods, so that nuclear trash becomes fuel. Fuel rods aren't removed from service because they are no longer producing sufficient heat, they are removed from service because they have become polluted with other radioactive products and the cladding is becoming stressed from heat and radiation and the rods are in danger of becoming physically unstable if they stay in service.
Its pathetic to see how much money the government waste on wars and bailing out foreign banks and domestic banks, but nobody has a billion dollars to develop a thorium reactor. We are literally nickel and diming ourselves to death.
Too bad we can't figure out a way to make petroleum out of thorium, Exxon might be interested then, otherwise we're pretty much fucked. or is that fukushima'd?
Copied from above in this thread. Getting tiresome.
Negatives, well there are a lot of factors, but just to boil it down so to speak:
1. Highly toxic, radiological hazards. Comparing these systems to 'worse' nuclear designs is a red herring. Thorium reactors are still nuclear power plants.
2. The required 'bridge' via reprocessing of conventional nuclear waste. That is one of the most dangerous industrial activities ever devised. Thorium is, as a rule, a cover for waste reprocessing/extending the above-ground nuclear waste cycle in a political economic sense.
3. Expensive. Non-market solution.
4. Uninsurable. Non-market solution.
5. Requires state domination of society. See 1-4 above.
6. Unavailable in a relevant time frame.
Hope that's a good list for starters. Sorry, no links, just reality.
I don't mind discussion, but after hundreds of 'thorium mania' posts here on ZH it's gotten to be a real snake oil show.
Please show a reference which indicates that a Liquid Fluorine Thorium Reactor has operated successfully and safely on a large scale, anywhere on earth.
India has played at this for years. Nothing. Sadly, what I believe is, is that if the Thorium reactor were such a lead pipe cinch, could solve all our power problems and MAKE A HUGE PROFIT, it would have happened by now.
It is still in R&D. I repeat, it is still in R&D. When it is complete, that's when we see profit. Duh.
Fox's favourite whipping boy, China, is the world's biggest investor and researcher in this technology. They are also the world's largest producer and buyer of renewable energy products. They need it.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8393984/Safe-nuclear-does-exist-and-China-is-leading-the-way-with-thorium.html
Liquid flouride is a molecular salt, not elemental flourine [which is a gasseous element]. Common table salt is molecular sodium chloride, which is resembles neither elemental sodium [a metal] nor elemental chlorine [a gas].
Weinberg, Radkowsky, Wigner et al were deliberately shutdown by political/corporate vested interests in the Uranium fuel cycle.
and if sex and love made everybody happy, I'm sure there would be no pain on earth and we would all have bliss.
Because y does or doesn't exist does not in fact create x.
You are either naive or stupid, I hope it is the first as that can easily be cured.
Are cars better than walking? Did that make the invention of the automobile inevitable? If cars are better than walking, than flying must be even better than driving. Where's the freaking flying cars?
Money and wealth are as much about controlling what gets made and who gets it as they are about innovation and proper use of capital.
You may have noticed governments spend substantially more money on bombs and wars than they do on food and babies. What makes you think they would give a rats ass about thorium, when they have perfectly serviceable uranium reactors with a substantial embedded cost that must be recovered by a factor of hundreds before any obsolescence occurs.
You can't have cd's until you go through 8-tracks and casettes. Your right Thorium couldn't possibly be viable, no sense investing in doom.
No one has yet produced a commercial LFTR, therefore of course I cannot produce data on a non-existent system. However Oakridge Tennesee used to have a research reactor which was stable enough to run for years and was shut down every weekend and restarted every monday and those bright bulbs claimed it was feasible a half century ago. I should think with the technology and materials breakthroughs and developments since then, that it would be feasible.
Perhaps I am wrong, maybe it won't work. I'd sure rather see the U.S. working on it. Spending just one tenth of what they spend on the war in Iraq or even just what they waste on hot fusion research.
The way the world is going its likely we will never know if its feasible or not.
My lament is we are pissing away the future trying to maintain an unstable, unsustainable present. We are reaching a point of disengration of stable societies based on complex unstable systems, what follows is chaos.
Hope I'm wrong.
Maybe we will be nuked here by idiot plant owners. BUT...I thank God that I don't live in China because if the readers here think that US operators are dangerous, imagine how Chinese nuclear power facilities will be run! Lord Have Mercy on all of us. And don't think it stays in China, it moves Eastwards also.
As a PS the "hot particles" issue is for real and is seperate from the issue of "background" radiation, which has its own dangers. A few particles in the lungs can cause metastases that the immune system can't deal with. Simply put, a Meltdown in Peking will have repercussions here too.
Isn''t that amazing!
If reactors were small, modular, constructed deep in the ground, and had a lake nearby to flood the containment in the event of a problem nuclear energy would be safe. That is exactly what current proposals call for. Like "submarining" your nuke.
Don't get it. What? We could have lakes of radioactive water? That, guaranteed, has no effect on surrounding acquifers? Instead of one troubled nuclear plant we could have 30 50MW plantlets scattered hither and yon, hot rods and all. Hey, put a few in downtown SanDiego! or in Manhattan next to the Hudson river. oh Wait, there is a 2Gigger up the river from Manhattan, scratch that one.
You have a ref for who is planning these little bundles of joy?
Snottiness aside, I have friends in Omaha and YES, I called them and asked them to visit me in ND until the flooding is done (not expected to end until later in July).
GMan: Hey, these reactors are good in subs right?
Engineer: yeah
GMan: and subs work underwater right?
Engineer: err, yeah.
GMan: OK, thanks, that's all I needed to know. *ticks box for flood resistance*
Engineer: *facepalm*
Not sure how this missed MSM, the Supreme Court apparently has acknowledged that individual people have standing, under the 10th amendment, to sue the federal government for over-reaching its constitutional powers.
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/09-1227.pdf
I am thinking this has A LOT of applications under the current administration.
So, the courts may not be completely list after all.
The original reccomendation* for commercial NucPwrPlants was to use Thorium, not Uranium, bec the Th fuel-cycle esentially stops itself when going out of control and produces only tiny amounts [compared to U] of Plutonium needed for weapons.
* The Navy designer of its {Rickover's] nuc reactor core for propulsion was Alvin Radkowsky, who along with Alvin Weinberg had much experience on Thorium-fuelled reactors for commercial electric power production...and why this is very relevant to the current situation..
Google Alvin Radkowsky and Alvin Weinberg... for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_M._Weinberg
What safe over corp. $$$$ I'm thankful greed wins
The original reccomendation* for commercial NucPwrPlants was to use Thorium, not Uranium, bec the Th fuel-cycle esentially stops itself when going out of control and produces only tiny amounts [compared to U] of Plutonium needed for weapons.
* The Navy designer of its {Rickover's] nuc reactor core for propulsion was Alvin Radkowsky, who along with Alvin Weinberg had much experience on Thorium-fuelled reactors for commercial electric power production...and why this is very relevant to the current situation.
Google Alvin Radkowsky and Alvin Weinberg... for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_M._Weinberg
This is a lot like saying the early automobiles (also called horseless carriages) looked a lot like carriages for horses.
http://www.google.com/search?q=horseless+carriage&num=100&hl=en&client=f...
True, but they don't like that anymore. Considering the huge amounts of money which have been spent on nuclear reactor research since then by not only the U.S. government but also commercial and foreign governments and companies, you can't put the blame on early design decisions.
Fukushima was a HAARP tectonic event using ELF
radio waves (2.5 Hz) to initiate earthquake/tsunami.
The energy released was equivalent to 1 million 30kt
bombs, like used on Nagasaki. Earthquake and
133 ft. high tsunami waves did for Fukushima.
What did they use for their energy source?
Thanks again GW.I saw this info elsewhere....but in more remote corners of the Internet.
I actually used to think nuclear power was a good idea...and supported it.
Not anymore.The downside risk is so hideous and terrible it defies the conventions of language to express.IE:Visit a cancer ward...see the suffering and impact to families.Then think how much bigger that ward will need to be in the future.Such a horrific vision should be enough to galvanise the people for change re our insane nuclear policy.
Keep up the good work!
win!
you shivered and i pooped my pants.
just read it
http://www.nwtrb.gov/reports/eds_execsumm.pdf
pucker factor ten
The safety violations reported in the AP-story made me shiver.
Cracks in pressure vessels or tubing of 40% of thickness when the steel gets brittle and they are permitted to operate?
That is criminal and insane.
To compare I would like to see the safety records of the nuclear power plants in
Eastern Europe.
This sounds similar to the Soviet Empire in it's last days.
..........Because It Worked On Navy Submarines
why....that's the same "logic" used by 2008's fascist Repuglican (now turned libertarian peabrain teabagger) presidential candidate Grampy John "Alzheimers" McCain.
are you saying this wise old man's allegiance to militarism's all knowing "expertise" about everything is somehow flawed?
wow....no one could have seen that coming. lol
You might want to read this:
Jim Stone
The disaster is far far worse than you have been told, because few people realize that nuclear weapons were used at Fukushima. I am not certain even TEPCO knows yet. The Japanese government DOES KNOW and I believe they are under threat to not tell the Japanese people. Germany has apparently figured it out also, and kicked all the Israelis out of their nuclear facilities and also shut down all the nuclear facilities that Israelis provided "security" for. Because nuclear weapons were used to blow Fukushima apart, the disaster is worse than Chernobyl. Fukushima Diiachi has a situation where exposed fuel is out in the open on the ground in large amounts. This has NEVER been reported in the "official" news, but my report, which uses photos America was never allowed to see on tv makes it obvious. I am guessing the Japanese were never allowed to see these photos either.Special Update for Japanese visitors
Jim Stone Interview on 15June2011 - New Audio+more here
multiple linkssss pls not just one, dont hit and run, please stay.
"Because nuclear weapons were used to blow Fukushima apart..."
substantiate or get the fuck out.
The real issue is that we live in a quasi-capitalist society where the profit motive will influence all decisions at any power generator. Therefore, I cannot trust anyone to safely operate a nuke for the next 30 years. Can you predict the geo-political environment 60 years from now (the new length of time for which these are commissioned)? Think about how different Japan and Germany looked 60 years ago, as a starting point. And then who manages the waste for the following 20,000 years?
damn it, took a long time on zh, but i think i love you whoever you are.
i mean it, amazing. good shit. i hope cd doesnt come in on this thread and shit on it...
We have unlimited free energy awaiting us
in scalar space, thanks to Tesla.
Unfortunately, scalar energy is pollution free.
lmaoooo ;)
imwichuuu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdkefuInVV0
turn it up.
listen.
dance.
Wow, a whole article on nucular safety and no mention of LFTR?
USA needs thousands of LFTRs, replacing all fossil and uranium fission power generation. We need enough LFTRs to synthesize liquid fuels from atmospheric CO2 and water economically. And to do that, we need NIMBYs to EABODADIAF.
The world governments & scientists are letting us down in a big way.
I think this is the beginning of the end of life as we know it.
god bless you george.....many of us were around when reason magazine published its seminal article on the ergonomic fallacies driving the design of nuclear power plant control panels including the one at 3 mile island...many of your older readers will recall that the aec demanded that certain interfaces be adopted "because it looked nuclear and space age" - not because the design was sensible or safe...
i have complete contempt for the ruling class....they prance and preen about their educational credentials yet they create toxic and unsafe worlds....fuck all you assholes....
You are 100% correct!
I'm with you. but you know what.
you and I, most of us, have good hearts.
440 US residents represent 2% of US GDP.
they do not.
they have small shriveled contemptuous cells for hearts.
they have nothing BUT contempt for ....everyone not them.
tough to understand, but is it really?
Israel Vibration - The System Is A Fraud
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InqSa08_n_U
Toots & The Maytals - Time Tough
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXxOU49TVKA
"early in the morning, oh mercy, the same situation...you can't blame your 'sisters', or your 'brothers'..."
in my experience, it'll be alright if you let it...
; )
costs are important. i want them to use the cheapest stuff possible but still run safely. this is a free market solution: to allow damaged parties to file suit against the plant operators for losses suffered. insurance companies will force tighter safety specs, that was easy. but the government will get involved and the masses will propose more government and they will force their own power bills ever higher and impose tighter regulations to drive technology and jobs overseas. this isn't a republic, this is mob-ocracy.
When a plant goes crap, the plant owner does not pay the bills, you stupid moron - he cannot pay them, he just goes bancrupt.
Then, in your wonderful "free market" fairyland, where millions of people are "free" to be radiated before any wrong is being corrected...... in that fairytale world, the next corp then again builds a crappy reactor, runs profit for 40+ years, and then gets wiped out when SHTF.
You unreasonsible, malicious, naive and ignorant moron think longterm considerations (tens of years) are part of how markets work? If there is ANYTHING in which plain unregulated markets are notoriously bad at, then it is long-term thinking.
Free markets are good for efficiently adapting to high short-term dynamicity. Actually, i think no other economic model is that efficient at dealing with short-term highspeed dynamicity. But unfortunatelly, shortterm dynamicity isn't everything that matters - and it ESPECIALLY by far is not everything that matters for nuclear reactors. Your proposal of using free market principles, to solve lack of longterm thinking and preventing disasters BEFORE they happen, is about the most stupid proposals one could make.
I'm happy for myself and others, that free-market proponents of your type, have no significant power in society. You disgust me. You are willing to advocate radiating millions of people, just to promote your ideology.
On the other hand, I'm sad for myself and others, that sane free-market proponents have no significant power in society.
No insurance company is going to insure a nuclear power plant.
There are estimates that a worst-case acident could cost trillions and bankrupt a country.
For illustration purposes, imagine that the radioactive cloud that originated from Fukushima would have gone over Tokio instead of the pacific. Imagine the Tokyo area uninhabitable for centuries. Good luck finding an insurer for that type of risk.
Leaving the details aside (pressurized water reactors are used on Navy ships, not boiling water reactors), the existential issues with the industry aren't specifically bound by regulators.
- A thriving industrial economy is necessary to support nuclear power which cannot support industrial economy by itself. As economies slide, nukes are threatened b/c long term 'tending' over decades becomes unaffordable.
- Industry is graying, experienced operators are retiring, equipment is rotting as in petroleum business. Anything departed Matt Simmons said about oil industry -- fuel availability, infrastructure breakdown, and inept management -- can be applied to nuke industry.
- Nuke power's product is (supposedly) cheap baseload electricity. What it demands in exchange for that electricity is acceptance of periodic catastrophes. These increase the fear of electricity consumers: it's hard to balance terror against 7¢ kilowatts. At the same time, reactors whose product cannot be sold cheaply -- that is, without anxiety -- will not be built.
- The upfront costs of reactors have been paid so operators are eager to keep older plants operating, this leads to shrinking replacement/upgrade budgets. This leaves subsidies -- which is another reason for reactor designs -- as only way to afford reactors. Once a design was proved useful it also meant it could be funded.
BTW, there are worse reactor designs, such as the breeder plant @ Monju which is also under threat.
Don't forget RBMK (Chernobyl), graphite pile air cooled (Windscale), liquid metal fast reactor (Fermi), SRE (Simi Valley) and others. Even well designed reactors can be abused an fail and any reactor can be improperly spec'ed (which is what happened @ Fukushima). Builder cuts corners and rationalizes.
Problem w/ BWR reactor is:
- reactor pressure/containment too small for power output,
- vents to control pressure and steam suppression don't work.
- All plants create waste that cannot be disposed of b/c no adequate disposal has been agreed to: included is several hundred tons of plutonium in spent fuel.
There are about 900 different possible designs for nuke plants, none are -- or can be -- perfect. The greatest limitations are the cost, which can only be borne by a prospering industrial economy.
I have a one- word retort for 'prosperity': Geithner.
Best strategy is become anti- nuclear advocate. Your kids will thank you.
"The greatest limitations are the cost" aka Profits.
bingo and also lmao funnee.
jeetnerrrrrrrr! i want jeeeetnerrrr! we all need some jeeeeetnerrrrr! jeeeetner for all!
boardwalk empire style.
You're not helping your cause by slandering naval pressurized water reactors. They're the safest design to come out of the 20th century. The boiling water reactor is not a "variant" of a PWR, it works on a completely different principle. Now there are safer designs yet.
Also not helping by breathlessly declaring that 75% of plants have released tritium. Tritium isn't entirely harmless, but it's very low risk, and they don't release very much of it anyway. It's not in the same class whatsoever as dangerous fission products and fissile material. The shit spewing out of Fukushima--and which could likely spew out of Vermont Yankee or Pilgrim or any of the many other BWRs not having containment of their spent fuel--is deadly toxic and cancer causing.
While these plants ought to be shut down and dismantled wit the spent fuel moved off site, merely shutting them down does very little. They are nearly as dangerous shut down as they are running. And equally vulnerable to terrorist attack whether running or not. The spent fuel stored on site is a terrible disaster waiting to happen.
One way to improve safety: shut down plants which have spent fuel on site. Force them to get rid of the spent fuel if they want to run. Keeping the fuel on site is just kicking the can down the road.