5 ms·

What a bad faith post. > Three Mile Island Was handled reasonably well, resulted in safety improvements to procedures and designs for future reactors. From h

What a bad faith post. > Three Mile Island Was handled reasonably well, resulted in safety improvements to procedures and designs for future reactors. From https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/3mile-isle.html#summary https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/3... > The approximately 2 million people around TMI-2 during the accident are estimated to have received an average radiation dose of only about 1 millirem above the usual background dose. To put this into context, exposure from a chest X-ray is about 6 millirem and the area's natural radioactive background dose is about 100-125 millirem per year for the area. The accident's maximum dose to a person at the site boundary would have been less than 100 millirem above background. Not exactly the end of the world. > Chernobyl Accident caused by Communists who did not care about what happened to Ukrainians, as usual for them, and experimented with something that any nuclear physicist could have told them was a terrible idea. This is like blaming vehicles and calling them unsafe after reaching over from the passenger seat and yanking the wheel to drive a truck into a crowd. The moral of the story here is to keep Communists away from anything important, which applies to farms, industrial sectors, food distribution, and really most things more complicated than a pitchfork or a torch. > Fukushima Was reasonably safe for its long life, but they cheaped out on the necessary wall and drainage functionality; should probably have been decomm'd and replaced before this happened. The problem in the nuclear industry is that anti-nuclear people like you form public opinion that causes it to be difficult for it to move forward. New plants based on newer designs are orders of magnitude safer - e.g. the CANDU Canadian reactor which is more fail-safe than most, and the push towards 4th generation reactors. Get out of the way and let the planet have a clean base load energy source, or be sitting here bitching about carbon footprints 50 years from now when it should be a solved problem already.

isatty 6y ago
> Accident caused by Communists who did not care about what happened to Ukrainians There were many such RBMK reactors spread all over the Soviet world that had the same flaws . There are many problems with your summary so can I just recommend that you watch the HBO mini series "Chernobyl" instead? It's a great watch.
- read_if_gay_ 6y ago
  That mini series is indeed a great watch but it's also not exactly factual.
  - regularfry 6y ago
    Are there inaccuracies around the portrayal of why and how the reactor failed?
    - read_if_gay_ 6y ago
      I don’t think there are fundamental inaccuracies about that, but there are many exaggerations about the immediate aftermath. E.g. the fireman’s hand burning from touching a graphite fragment stood out as a particularly egregious one. And it is in fact shown that the disaster was caused by incompetence and carelessness, which does support GGPs point.
- core-questions 6y ago
  Flaws? The meltdown was caused by a deliberate action on behalf of people with control of the plant. I haven't watched Chernobyl because I prefer to not get my history from television shows with a narrative axe to grind.
  - regularfry 6y ago
    My understanding is that those actions were only capable of causing the problems they did because of specific design choices involved in the coolant and moderation systems. Is that wrong?
    - core-questions 6y ago
      That's not wrong so much as it is a disingenous way of looking at the problem. It's like saying the Titanic only sank because there was no system that prevented them from sailing it into an iceberg; I mean, alright, sort-of true, but sort of a "missing the forest for the trees" sort of take, isn't it?
jhallenworld 6y ago
Inherent safety of CANDU: https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/31/007/31007096.pdf https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/... But keep in mind that the NRX reactor it was based on had an accident: https://www.cns-snc.ca/media/history/nrx.html https://www.cns-snc.ca/media/history/nrx.html (famously, Jimmy Carter was part of the NRX clean-up crew).
m0zg 6y ago
> Communists who did not care about what happened to Ukrainians They didn't really care what happened to _anybody_, not just Ukrainians. Ukrainians (as well as about 30% of Russians) just happened to live in that particular location. The plume made it all the way to the Nordics and Germany, and I, as a kid, had to take iodine tablets in Russia, even though officially everything was "under control" for a few days. Then the narrative shifted to showing the heroism of the "liquidators", never fully acknowledging how dangerous any of this really was.
- core-questions 6y ago
  Good point, I agree entirely. It's clear that nuclear power needs to be under the control of responsible governments, built in safe locations (i.e. not on fault lines, not in tsunami zones), and needs solid maintenance budgets. All of these things are solvable problems, but if we don't solve them before all the current nuclear plant techs age out, we won't be able to apprentice people and keep the culture of solid maintenance alive. At that point, they really do become an albatross.
- jessaustin 6y ago
  This was true in USA too. They took pretty good care of the scientists who knew enough to call out unsafe conditions, but laborers etc. at e.g. PGDP were regularly exposed to poisons and radiation. EEOICP was put together late enough that many of the affected workers had already died.
redis_mlc 6y ago
> What a bad faith post. Yeah, when humans can be trusted, nuclear will be 100% safe. Any day now!
MertsA 6y ago
>> Fukushima >Was reasonably safe for its long life, but they cheaped out on the necessary wall and drainage functionality They didn't "cheap out" on the seawall at Fukushima. You may be referring to how the plant design was sited closer to the ocean but the seawall was constructed to not be overtopped by the highest tsunami possible. At the time the plant was constructed the theory was that tsunamis were generated in part by underwater landslides and the topology of the surrounding ocean was taken into account to come up with the largest possible tsunami it would have to block. The science behind tsunami formation was flawed during construction and once that theory was later improved no one ever reconsidered the implications for the seawall design. I agree that public perception is the largest problem by far with nuclear energy but you're not helping your argument by brushing real problems under the rug like this.
phs318u 6y ago
Bad faith post? Call me when the Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act (which socialises all costs over $12.6B in case of an accident) is repealed. What happens if the passive cooling pool drains? Let me guess, “That will never happen!” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price–Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price–Anderson_Nuclear_Indus...

isatty 6y ago

> Accident caused by Communists who did not care about what happened to Ukrainians There were many such RBMK reactors spread all over the Soviet world that had the same flaws . There are many problems with your summary so can I just recommend that you watch the HBO mini series "Chernobyl" instead? It's a great watch.

read_if_gay_ 6y ago
That mini series is indeed a great watch but it's also not exactly factual.
- regularfry 6y ago
  Are there inaccuracies around the portrayal of why and how the reactor failed?
  - read_if_gay_ 6y ago
    I don’t think there are fundamental inaccuracies about that, but there are many exaggerations about the immediate aftermath. E.g. the fireman’s hand burning from touching a graphite fragment stood out as a particularly egregious one. And it is in fact shown that the disaster was caused by incompetence and carelessness, which does support GGPs point.
core-questions 6y ago
Flaws? The meltdown was caused by a deliberate action on behalf of people with control of the plant. I haven't watched Chernobyl because I prefer to not get my history from television shows with a narrative axe to grind.
- regularfry 6y ago
  My understanding is that those actions were only capable of causing the problems they did because of specific design choices involved in the coolant and moderation systems. Is that wrong?
  - core-questions 6y ago
    That's not wrong so much as it is a disingenous way of looking at the problem. It's like saying the Titanic only sank because there was no system that prevented them from sailing it into an iceberg; I mean, alright, sort-of true, but sort of a "missing the forest for the trees" sort of take, isn't it?

jhallenworld 6y ago

Inherent safety of CANDU: https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/31/007/31007096.pdf https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/... But keep in mind that the NRX reactor it was based on had an accident: https://www.cns-snc.ca/media/history/nrx.html https://www.cns-snc.ca/media/history/nrx.html (famously, Jimmy Carter was part of the NRX clean-up crew).

m0zg 6y ago

> Communists who did not care about what happened to Ukrainians They didn't really care what happened to _anybody_, not just Ukrainians. Ukrainians (as well as about 30% of Russians) just happened to live in that particular location. The plume made it all the way to the Nordics and Germany, and I, as a kid, had to take iodine tablets in Russia, even though officially everything was "under control" for a few days. Then the narrative shifted to showing the heroism of the "liquidators", never fully acknowledging how dangerous any of this really was.

core-questions 6y ago
Good point, I agree entirely. It's clear that nuclear power needs to be under the control of responsible governments, built in safe locations (i.e. not on fault lines, not in tsunami zones), and needs solid maintenance budgets. All of these things are solvable problems, but if we don't solve them before all the current nuclear plant techs age out, we won't be able to apprentice people and keep the culture of solid maintenance alive. At that point, they really do become an albatross.
jessaustin 6y ago
This was true in USA too. They took pretty good care of the scientists who knew enough to call out unsafe conditions, but laborers etc. at e.g. PGDP were regularly exposed to poisons and radiation. EEOICP was put together late enough that many of the affected workers had already died.

redis_mlc 6y ago

> What a bad faith post. Yeah, when humans can be trusted, nuclear will be 100% safe. Any day now!

MertsA 6y ago

>> Fukushima >Was reasonably safe for its long life, but they cheaped out on the necessary wall and drainage functionality They didn't "cheap out" on the seawall at Fukushima. You may be referring to how the plant design was sited closer to the ocean but the seawall was constructed to not be overtopped by the highest tsunami possible. At the time the plant was constructed the theory was that tsunamis were generated in part by underwater landslides and the topology of the surrounding ocean was taken into account to come up with the largest possible tsunami it would have to block. The science behind tsunami formation was flawed during construction and once that theory was later improved no one ever reconsidered the implications for the seawall design. I agree that public perception is the largest problem by far with nuclear energy but you're not helping your argument by brushing real problems under the rug like this.

phs318u 6y ago

Bad faith post? Call me when the Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act (which socialises all costs over $12.6B in case of an accident) is repealed. What happens if the passive cooling pool drains? Let me guess, “That will never happen!” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price–Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price–Anderson_Nuclear_Indus...