On Fri, 26 Jun 2015 11:54:47 -0700, tabbypurr wrote:

On Friday, 26 June 2015 16:23:39 UTC+1, John Rumm wrote:
On 23/06/2015 22:52, tn wrote:
On Tuesday, 23 June 2015 17:20:21 UTC+1, John Rumm wrote:
On 22/06/2015 21:51, ARW wrote:
nt wrote in message
...
On Monday, 22 June 2015 20:40:40 UTC+1, ARW wrote:
nt wrote in message
...
On Sunday, 21 June 2015 23:20:25 UTC+1, Jim x321x wrote:
My house was built and wired in the 1980s and has an old-style
fuse box.


Is there really a significant increase in electrical safety
with the modern RCD units?

There are 20 something deaths from shock a year, mostly due to
people doing idiotic things. RCDs reduce the risk. This is a
long way down
the
list of Risky Things in Life, so is the oposite of a priority.


So what what would you prioritize?

Look at the top 10 killers.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lead...s-of-death.htm

The top 2 are heart disease & cancer. They kill half the
population. Expert concensus is half these deaths are readily
avoidable by healthier eating, not smoking & some exercise. These
are the number 1 priorities.

A lifesyle choice is not relevant to diy or general risks in the
house.

Not only that, as had been pointed out at various times, one insures
against losses that one can't otherwise replace. I would include
wife and children in that category, so a one off premium of a couple
of hundred for smoke alarms and RCDs sounds like a very worthwhile
investment.

2 different issues lumped together,

Smoke alarms and RCDs are different - however the risks associated with
not having either are comparable (although injury from fires per years
are far fewer than from electric shock).

200 something deaths a year in fires now, 20 something from shock

I seem to recall someone round here was very fond of plastering
domestic fire safety stats into every wiki article given the chance.
Why the double standards?

why the claim of double standards? how would stating the known facts
possibly be that? Its not even worth answering.

and a non sequitur.

Explain

I already have. I've shown how I assessed whether RCDs were worth
fitting. You simply did not address the necessary points in order to
reach a reason based case on the question of whether its a good things
to install your RCDs.

Maybe some of us just aren't into risk assessment.

You think... I wonder who?

I've offered a clear risk & cost asessment, plus placed it in the list
of available risk reductions, thereby determining if its a priority or
whether there are far bigger priorities. Yours has so far been an
assessment of the risk followed by an illogical conclusion.

Unfortunately the approach you've shown is common today. It results in
people spending on tiny risks and consequently neglecting the big ones.
No-one has the resources to address all risks, so the sensible approach
is to prioritise the ones we can reduce the most. That is evidently not
RCDs, unless you've effectively tackled a fairly long list of others
already.


In a nut shell, humanity's short sightedness when it comes to deciding
how we should spend effort and resources on tackling 'problems'. The
Green Party's obsession with wind turbine, solar voltaic and tidal
sources of energy is a classic case in point.

They regard these sources of Mother Nature's 'energy bounty' as being
'Low Tech' eco-friendly ways to solve the world population's energy
demands when they're anything but 'eco-friendly'.

They choose to ignore that other 'energy bounty' on offer from 'Mother
Nature', Nuclear Fission, on the basis that it requires ingenious high
tech methods of extraction involving, at the point of energy extraction,
highly dangerous radio active materials that have to be properly handled
and processed to reduce the risk to the environment at large by two or
three orders of magnitude compared to a conventional coal fired power
station of equivalent energy output.

Their thinking has been coloured by their experience of the earlier
nuclear powered station technologies driven by the needs of the cold war
demands to build up stocks of weapons' grade plutonium using power
stations sited in remote locations, seemingly to reduce the impact of a
Chernobyl like event on the population at large.

The plain fact is, it is now possible to upgrade existing coal fired
power stations to nuclear power, based on a Liquid Fueled Thorium Reactor
(LFTR) design that was first experimented with half a century ago as a
potential method of powering a USAF 'Always Aloft' Bomber Fleet.

Only the American Military had a big enough priority and the budget to
bankroll such 'Blue Sky' research projects. ICBMs sidelined the concept
of an always aloft bomber fleet so the technology, so promising a
solution as it was for civil nuclear power station design, was simply
left to languish.

If the 'Green Party' membership were to truly compare the *actual* cost/
benefit ratios of *all* the 'Green Options' Mother Nature Provides, LFTR
would win hands down on energy generation, environmental impact *and*
pollution costs. They wouldn't be able to tear down all those pointless
Wind Turbines fast enough!

Sadly, as you pointed out, it's humanity's propensity to short sighted
obsession with seemingly 'nice warm cozy 'cheap' 'feel good factor'
solutions that leads to wasted time and resources on sub-optimal
solutions. A shortsightedness that's invariably taken advantage of by the
"PT Barnum" "Get Rich Quick" type of individual or major corporate
business.

At the heart of all this, of course, is a nation's educational system
which, in the UK and America at least, is seriously lacking in teaching
the fundamental skills required to question gift horse offers and other
dubious claims such as that rather outrageous idea that the damaging
effects of nuclear radiation levels follow a totally contrary curve of
damage versus level which apply to all other forms of radiation exposure
such as UV light from solar radiation and the effects of microwave
radiation which have lead us into believing that almost impossibly
expensive anti-radiation precautions are required in Nuclear Power
Station design, making the Nuclear Power option infeasibly expensive.

Actually, the most expensive part of a Cold War type of Nuclear Power
Station is its Containment Vessel. A modern LFTR based design totally
does away with the need of such containment measures (along with an
expensive re-fueling process industry) whilst offering a 200 fold
improvement in energy yield from the nuclear fuel itself. As always,
"Ignorance"(tm) strikes again at the heart of the matter.

BTW, many a conspiracy theory nut would lay claim that the Oil and
Petrochemical industry are doing their best to scupper the idea of a
"Nuclear Powered World"(tm) when in fact it would be in their best
interests to branch out (diversify) into Nuclear Power Station design and
proliferation so they can corner the market in *synthesised*
petrochemicals and save the costs in dangerous exploration and drilling
for a dwindling natural resource.

--
Johnny B Good