On 01/06/2013 20:36, Farmer Giles wrote:
On 01/06/2013 19:13, Nightjar wrote:
On 01/06/2013 18:28, Farmer Giles wrote:
...
What frightening complacency. Even if I accept what you say above -
which I don't - what about earthquakes (which can happen anywhere,
however unlikely it may appear from past history),

Fukushima was hit by an earthquake that was many times more powerful
than it was designed for and suffered no damage from the earthquake
itself. That earthquake was about 30,000 times more severe than
Britain's most powerful recorded earthquake, which knocked the head off
a waxwork in Madam Tussauds.

terrorist attacks, etc?

If those are going to bother you, you may as well go and live in a deep
cave in the middle of nowhere.

Whether they bother me, or indeed what happens to me, is of little
consequence. What happens to the world and, more importantly, what
happends to future generations, is not.

You tell me what might have happened if those aeroplanes had been flown
into nuclear power stations instead of the World Trade Centre?

Virtually nothing. Reactor cores are built on a scale matched only by
the strongest of military bunkers and they are inside very strong
containment vessels. The WTC was built to be as light as possible,
although it would still have withstood an impact from the largest
aircraft around when it was designed - the Boeing 707.

Here is an analysis of the risk carried out after 9/11, using the
Pentagon crash as the basis, as that was a lot stronger structure than
the WTC:

http://www.nei.org/newsandevents/aircraftcrashbreach/

These products will need to be stored for hundreds, if not thousands, of
years. They will be added to and added to, because no-one knows how to
detoxify them.

We have known how to do that for more than half a century. Storing them
is cheaper.

Really? I may be wrong, but my understanding is that we are no closer to
detoxifying nuclear wastes now than we were 70 years ago.

Then your understanding is wrong. We have had the technology to
reprocess 95% of nuclear waste, including all high level waste, since
the first fast rector was built. It is simply a lot cheaper to store it.

Colin Bignell