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I'd accept that nuclear can be safer, if I had any faith in the operational model for the plants. I live in Albany, NY about 80 miles from the Vermont Yankee n
by Duff 15y ago
I'd accept that nuclear can be safer, if I had any faith in the operational model for the plants.
I live in Albany, NY about 80 miles from the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, a Mark 1 GE reactor whose operator has a history of bad practices, like operating at 120% of capacity for extended periods and regularly releasing tritium into the Connecticut River. The facility has exceeded it's service life, and the operator is suing the State of Vermont for a license extension to make some more money on the place before having to clean up the site.
While coal plants in Ohio and Western NY probably pose a greater health hazard, there are other risks as well -- if a black swan event causes a serious incident at this aging facility, I live just outside of the "no humans allowed" zone. My family and relatives are in that radius and would be financially ruined by such an event.
I want a non-profit, quasi-military like organization operating plants in a transparent manner. I want aging reactors replaced by designs where operating safety was a bigger consideration in the design of the reactor. Operating these facilities with a bias towards making money for the operator is not in the public's interest.
- bgentry 15y agoI want a non-profit, quasi-military like organization operating plants in a transparent manner. A quasi-military / government organization operating transparently? Good luck with that.
- Derbasti 15y agoAny technology that makes human interaction and even plain observation impossible in the event of failure is a bad thing. To my mind, No One can be responsible for something that is impossible to control when things go bad. It is not that I don't trust engineers, but you can not compare profit vs. risk when you can not control risk.
- tjogin 15y agoSure it's a bad thing, but how can anyone possibly rationalize away the fact that coal plants kill more people than nuclear plants per kilowatt hour produced? For every one person killed by nuclear plants, thousands die because of coal, and other kinds of power plants don't stack up well against nuclear either.
- rbanffy 15y ago> coal plants kill more people than nuclear plants per kilowatt hour produced Not to be picky, but we are seeing some of the first aging nuclear facilities being operated beyond their designed lifetime by people who don't deserve to be qualified as competent. Coal has killed more people than nuclear, but it certainly seems nuclear power operators are well prepared to close that gap. :-/ I worry about future failures as those reactors grow old. Having said that, it would be much wiser to build more modern, resilient, nuclear power plants than the equivalent capacity in coal.
- tjogin 15y agoWell, why do reactors grow old to begin with? Because nuclear isn't an area where funding for research is pouring in. Had we not pulled the nuclear handbreak, we wouldn't be stuck with aging reactors in the first place. Now that we have them though, why can't we just shut them down? Because of the energy deficit that would create since we're still pulling on the nuclear handbreak.
- rbanffy 15y agoYou've got a point, but we still need to use these reactors while we build more modern, safer ones to replace them. It won't be pretty.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- extension 15y agoNot likely, as the gap is about 4000x http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-so...
- rbanffy 15y agoYou underestimate the power of a good couple INES-7 incidents.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- jrockway 15y agoMy family and relatives are in that radius and would be financially ruined by such an event. Isn't this exactly the case that insurance is designed for? A catastrophic event that is exceedingly unlikely to happen?
- Duff 15y agoNope. Insurance companies explicitly exclude these type of events. That should tell you something -- insurance companies don't like open-ended, catastrophic risk.
- jrockway 15y agoFortunately, the US government has $12 billion to help people out in the event of a catastrophe: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/funds-fs.html http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/fu...
- Someone 15y agoIn some way, that is honest, too. Very low-probability, but highly correlated risks (if it happens to you, it likely will happen to your neighbor, too) simply aren't a good fit for a capitalist system that does not look ahead more than say ten years. If an insurance company were to insure against such risks it would happily collect money from its customers. After a couple of years, its shareholders would force it to make dividend payouts. Then if the 'un'thinkable were to happen, it would go broke, and the customers would not get the money they paid for.
- saraid216 15y ago<i>I want a non-profit, quasi-military like organization operating plants in a transparent manner.</i> The lack of people who can reliably operate in a perfectly incorruptible governing capacity, whether governing people, budgets, or nuclear power plants, is precisely why we had to invent democracy. If you find a non-profit, quasi-military like organization working in a transparent manner, give them the freaking world.