We have had, to my knowledge, three incidents with nuclear power plants
where radiation escaped from the confines of the plant.
At Three Mile Island, the rate was never dangerous (I read or heard
somewhere in the last day that no radiation reached the public--haven't
confirmed that). Cause of the event was human failure, first to handle a
slight anomaly and then to quickly take assertive action (attempting instead
to cover-up).
At Chernobyl, the cause was human, the Soviet standard reaction of secrecy
and denial blocked corrective action.
Fukushima: From what I have seen on NHK, the officials are right on top of
this and forthright about reporting. The plant was hit not only with a
once-in-a-millennium quake, but with a tsunami. The plant survived unharmed,
but the power and the back-up power for cooling failed, and instead of
keeping up, the operators were forced to try to catch up/recover.
The only other nuclear accident I'm aware of was the sinking of the USS
Trident, which IFAIK had nothing to do with the power.
Meanwhile, what are our alternatives to nuclear power?
Coal? Excessive pollution, depletion of a finite, non-renewable fuel. Danger
to miners. Excessive contamination of mine locations. Coal seam fires:
Centralia, PA, no longer exists as a town due to a fire burning there since
1962. (BTW, there's environmental pollution galore from such fires.)
Oil/natural gas? Depletion of a finite, non-renewable fuel. Fire and
explosion danger (LNG fires don't even rate news coverage unless they're
huge, like San Bruno).
Water? Works great in areas where there's steady, strong waterflow, e.g.
Niagara Falls, Hoover Dam. Uncertain the effect on the environment (most
facilities were built before we measured such things).
Wind? Wonderful--where there's wind. Continually.
Solar? Great in small amounts, in areas nearer the equator--when the sun is
shining.
And one thing more about nuclear power: Note that Japan is big on nuclear
power, and if there's any country that would be expected to shy from it, it
would be the only country in history ever to be hit with atomic bombs.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kim Noyes" <kimnoyes@gmail.com>
To: <californiadisasters@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, March 14, 2011 8:46 PM
Subject: Re: [californiadisasters] CA's Nuclear Plants Are Earthquake Safe:
Operator
> ALL forms of energy production have their pros and cons, positives and
> negatives, and each society must decide for itself what is best.
> Nukes are the best form of energy production 99.999999% of the time when
> there is no M9.0 mega-thrust great quake occurring directly under the
plant
> that perhaps causes it to experience a melt-down.
> Fact of the matter is that we don't discontinue commercial aviation just
> because a plane with 100's of passengers crashes from time to time killing
> all aboard.
> Neither should nuclear power generation be discarded based upon this,
> particularly when we don't like fossil fuels as much as we used to due to
> concern over global warming and the limits and drawbacks of solar and wind
> and tidal power generation.
>
> Kimmer
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 8:38 PM, Richard Bixler
<karrie_scott@hotmail.com>wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > I wonder what the environmentalist are going to say about nuclear power
> > once all of this is said and done..? I have a feeling that nuclear power
in
> > the future is NOT going to be an option because they will deem it too
> > dangerous and not effective.
> >
> > Scott Bixler
> > <%28310%29%20337-9904>
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> Check out http://groups.yahoo.com/group/californiadisasters/
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>
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