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> The pro-nuclear crowd was arguing, as it was happening, that this could never occur. The cores would never breach the containment vessels, they said. As ment

by mpyne 13y ago

> The pro-nuclear crowd was arguing, as it was happening, that this could never occur. The cores would never breach the containment vessels, they said. As mentioned in the other comment, the cores breached the reactor vessels, which is what didn't happen at TMI. On the other hand, that did happen at Chernobyl (and explosively, to boot), so I'm not sure why people would be arguing that it's impossible or that it has never happened before. Unless possibly they mean that such a thing had never happened at a Western-style BWR or PWR reactor, which is at least closer to the truth. But either way, this is all part of the problem with these debates. Pro-nuclear advocates generally say stuff which is true in a very precise, jargonistic way, which then gets either immediately mis-interpreted, or mis-interpreted 3 years later in a way which makes them out to be liars. It would be like a computer hacker saying that it's impossible to get a security vulnerability from buffer overflow if you use a language that always manages memory, and then that managed language suffers a vuln from memory corruption instead. Laymen three years later would only remember "impossible to get security vulnerability from managed memory"...

timr 13y ago
"It would be like a computer hacker saying that it's impossible to get a security vulnerability from buffer overflow if you use a language that always manages memory, and then that managed language suffers a vuln from memory corruption instead. Laymen three years later would only remember "impossible to get security vulnerability from managed memory"..." Ehh. The flip side of this is that most of the "experts" use this kind of language to hide their uncertainties, while also overplaying their hand. It wouldn't be unreasonable for the layman to remember the phrase "impossible to get a security vulnerability from managed memory", because that's the strongest part of the statement -- the part of the statement that's intended to sell a technology. People don't remember the long strings of caveats that come later, nor should they. My point still stands: we aren't very good at predicting failure cases, so it doesn't serve us well to focus on the caveats of a statement that begins with "this can never happen". Any statement that begins with an absolute like that is almost assuredly incorrect.

by mpyne 13y ago

timr 13y ago

"It would be like a computer hacker saying that it's impossible to get a security vulnerability from buffer overflow if you use a language that always manages memory, and then that managed language suffers a vuln from memory corruption instead. Laymen three years later would only remember "impossible to get security vulnerability from managed memory"..." Ehh. The flip side of this is that most of the "experts" use this kind of language to hide their uncertainties, while also overplaying their hand. It wouldn't be unreasonable for the layman to remember the phrase "impossible to get a security vulnerability from managed memory", because that's the strongest part of the statement -- the part of the statement that's intended to sell a technology. People don't remember the long strings of caveats that come later, nor should they. My point still stands: we aren't very good at predicting failure cases, so it doesn't serve us well to focus on the caveats of a statement that begins with "this can never happen". Any statement that begins with an absolute like that is almost assuredly incorrect.