Earthquake in Japan....9.0...ouch!
- Thread starter bloodline76
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So you're saying millions upon millions of people die as a result of coal mining every year? That's one of the most beautiful pieces of misinformation I think I've ever read.
Soldato
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- 13 May 2003
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In what way does coal kill hundreds of thousands every day? I've read reports that 5000 people die each year in Chinese coal mines but that is a long long way off you're assertion.
I wouldn't imagine quite so many but yeah mining is a horribly risky business.
Get a grip and stop being naive? Do you think I’m cowering under my bed hoarding batteries in the event that we all run out of power or something? I'm not saying that the plants shouldn’t be delayed and improved if possible, and I am glad most countries are now doing thorough reviews of all current plants as it might make any slackers think again.
This plant was 40 years old, the new mk3+ reactors are so far away from this design that its already all been added. The problem is that no one has been building any for years. These plants had a 2 phase backup, new plants have a 4 phase AND are passive. Even if everyone in the plant drops dead the plant will shutdown just fine instead of needing people to do all the leg work.
My fear is based upon a few facts. Like the fact that the last plant in the UK started construction in 1988 and was hooked up in 1995. That’s 15 years of not replacing old plants that have been being retired since 1990. Since 1990 nearly 3000MW of nuclear energy has been switched off to the grid. Only 1188MW has been added back in nuclear. If we start pouring concrete on a new 1500MW plant today by the time it starts feeding the grid in a bare minimum of 5 years time the power its adding in will have just been switched off 4 times over at other plants.
Since as a country our electricity usage is going UP and at present our capacity is heading DOWN I don't think I’m being particularly naive at all.
In the USA no new plants have started being built since 1974 because in 1979 TMI happened which scared everyone ****less even though the reality was that it was a minor event compared to the utter cluster**** that was Chernobyl.
Since it doesn’t take 35 years to analyse an accident and add in new safety procedures to the new designs I have to wonder why they stopped? Even now they only get 20% of their power from Nuclear and that’s with 104 stations. Could it be that the irrational fear of the people at large and the lack of political balls to force more plants down people’s throats might have had an effect?
Since that time we have had over 400 reactors online across the world with no major issues at all. Thats not even counting the hundreds that are floating on/in the sea which have also been fine. Incredibly despite the fact that the earthquake was a 9 (about 475 megatones of TNT of energy released) and the plant was only designed to 7.5 (about 4.5 megatons) it actually survived it just fine. Only the tidal wave caused any problems here. Thats an earthquake ten times bigger than they ever feared in their wildest dreams of getting. And it took it, in the balls, like a man. Sadly the tidal wave really screwed it all up.
I have no issue with there being delays in the construction or delays while they do risk assessments. What I don't want to happen is an irrational public who are uneducated on the simplest of facts about nuclear energy stopping us from doing what I think is the right thing.
Now I’m going back under my bed with my batteries.
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At risk of being stupid here but I was wondering if the cooling system on these reactors are so critical, why are they not buried underground in some sort of bunker? I keep thinking the failure of the cooling system is causing all the problems so why didn't they put it deep underground in some kind of bunker? Sorry if this sounds dumb to someone who know's the score. My heart goes out to these poor people and what they are having to endure.
I think he's trying to say adding the health effects from pollution caused by coal. Things like heavy metals released in the smoke, carcinogenic soot particles, oxides of nitrogen both by themselves and as an ingredient to summer smogs, dealing with fly ash, toxic sludge ponds created while washing coal etc.
All our energy sources have their downsides.
Because that would make it even more complex to maintain. This reactor is a 40 years old design. Modern reactor designs can cool the residual heat without needing active cooling systems, so what we're seeing is a problem that has already been solved on any reactor that's built now.
Thanks for explaining that Dolph. I kept thinking about this when I was watching the news just.
Because the first strategy in dealing with a massive disaster is to avoid mass panic. The last thing you want happening is the whole country panicking and running to the nearest airport/petrol station/harbor etc etc
From a little digging it seems the US strategic command requested it to make sure their satellite and communication systems involved in search and rescue, etc. aren't competing for bandwidth on already strained networks.
Public networks are also used quite a bit, it happened in the UK too I think just before the 2nd Gulf War only in that case they used traffic management to make sure military traffic had priority over other traffic - for 2-3 days pretty much everyone maxed out around 0.5Mbit/s at peak times.
Soldato
- Joined
- 13 May 2003
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP1000 there is a small amount of information on the Westinghouse AP1000 wiki page.
what was it?