On 17/02/2021 15:23, Pancho wrote:
On 17/02/2021 14:31, Tim Streater wrote:
On 17 Feb 2021 at 13:29:09 GMT, Pancho
wrote:


Â* I would really like some real fact and figures and include the deaths
Â* and damage caused by the use of fossil fuels, palm oil etc etc versus
Â* the deaths and damaged caused by the use of nuclear power.
Â* That is what I'd consider to be the bigger picture.

This is a straw man argument. We all know fossil fuels have killed a
huge number of people and there is great doubt about any more than a
handful of deaths from nuclear power.

Despite this there are real concerns about potential damage that could
be caused by Nuclear Power.

Such as?

FOAD I'm 100% in favour of nuclear power, I just think that safety
concerns should be considered and addressed sensibly.

Which safety concerns would those be then, that are not already
addressed?


Well the concern would be that a reactor would explode releasing a large
amount a radioactive material into the atmosphere.

a reactor cannot explode, releasing a large
amount a radioactive material into the atmosphere.

Even Chernobyl which was a reactor under full criticality with no
shielding whatsoever burning itself out, did not 'explode' and it did
not 'release large amounts of radioactivity' the people who died from
radiation were actively within meters of the core fighting fires. Even
in pripyat, no one died of radiation although lack of iodine pills
caused 3000 avoidable thyroid cancer cases.

Engineers cannot prevent scenarios that cannot happen. They shouldn't
even need to answer questions about them

The point of SMRs is that they wont even melt down if they lose coolant.
They are too small - passive cooling is enough




It is very hard to list every possible scenario and exclude it.

Well in 50 years we have had most of them. It is not possible even
remotely to construct a scenario where a reactor 'blows up'

Your view is as idiotic as saying 'what if a car finds itself at 20,000
feet, will the airbags be enough when it hits te ground'



The problems at Chernobyl and Fukushima were caused by unforgivable
design flaws.

At Chernobyl it was:

AIUI Chernobyl had feedback effects which caused a rapid increase in
power and hence an explosion. It is very hard to defend against such
feedback effects, if they exist. I don't know how easy it is to ensure
they are eliminated.


The definitive sequence is this

"Two explosions were reported, the first being the initial steam
explosion, followed two or three seconds later by a second explosion,
possibly from the build-up of hydrogen due to zirconium-steam reactions.
Fuel, moderator, and structural materials were ejected, starting a
number of fires, and the destroyed core was exposed to the atmosphere."

Now a steam explosion can happen with any boiler and of and by itself
its really no big deal

In the case of chernobly it and the hydrogen explosion ruptured te
primary containment and there was no secondary containment. That is
Russia for you.

The reactor didnt 'blow up'

Some steam pipes ruptured and then the hydrogen blew up. That's the
hydrogen they want to use to store renewable energy that 'doesn't blow
up' by the way.

then the core melted down and ran out on the floor where it still is.

the radioactive release was entirely down to the lack of secondary
containment. No reactor design today lacks that.
With secondary containment it would have been a minor pop, and a
contained core meltdown and no fire

Yes you can list design flaws, Fukushima in particular seems pretty damn
stupid to me.

No, it was perfectly sensible at the time. It was designed proof against
earthquakes, which it was, and against 10 m tsunamis, which it was. Just
not a one in a thousand year 15 m tsunami., That is a ****ing ENMORMOUS
wave.,
I know that rational thought is hard for you, and you like to think in
big scary pictures instead, but the tsunami killed 20,000 people. It was
a massive disater.

It also knocked out a nuclear power station and caused two reactors to
melt down with no loss of life due to radiocativity at all ever.

The sort of safety you people want is such that if someone drops a
nuclear bomb on Sizewell; B and takkes out all of east Anglia, and
kills 5 million people, as long as not one died from a release of
radioactivityy from the power station you would be happy

Cannot you see how demented that is? Fukushima was a minor side show in
a huge non nuclear disaster.

Medai8 and politics class the power station - which killed no one - the
'disaster' and completely ignores the tsunami - where are the calls to
proof the whole japanese coastline for 25 meter high waves?


Although, I wouldn't have been able to point to it in
advance on usenet.

The biggest problem as it turned out was not the reactor design at all.
It scrammed as it should and went onto backkup power as it should.

Even when the tsunami took out the diesel generators., it was fine. It
just melted down and the cores got caught as they should be by containment.

if the operators had had the courage to vent the hydrogen out of the
hall that would have been that. But they didn't for fear of releasing
radioactivity so they let the thing pop instead and released somewhat
more than they needed to. That should have been that - minor release, no
big deal, precautionary iodine and that's that.

As itr was there was rather more than necessary - but even that was no
big deal at all.

What was far more worrying was leaking spent fuel ponds and much more
radioactive water ****ing out. Well the Pacific is a big place and in
the end it was literally a drop in the ocean.A sideshow in comparison to
the tsunami itself.

That's what actually happened. Nothing much at all.

Until panic set in inspired by media and ignorant people and fuelled by
ignorant government.


We can and should make reactors safer,

But we dont need to. And in fat we are simply making them miore
expensive. You cant get 'safer' than 'safe' Fuju was a yonks old Gen 1
boiling water reactor with fairly basic safety and it performed bloody
well.

A modern PWR is a lot better - far more than it needs to be.

we can even tolerate an
occasional **** up. A 30 mile exclusion area is not the end of the world.

There was no need for even a 300 meter exclusion zone at Fukushima

The disaster was the ignorance of people.
Its no point in building a safe reactor as long as general ugnorance
stops it ever being switched on



However I don't have much sympathy for someone who asserts all risks
have been uncovered and corrected. This just seems to be more of the
same complacent attitude that assured us risk events were 1 in a million
in the past.

Chernobyl aside, which was not a great design, the actual records show
that that level of tsunami is probably a one on a ten thousand year
event and it being close to a reactor was even less likely.

And even so the damage was minimal and loss of life was zero. What more
do you want?

There are double standards here. We dont expect that level of safety
from anything else.

Why nuclear? The point was with Fuku that at what level do you say 'we
will let the people drown but we mustn't let them even suffer a
0.000001% chance of early death from radioactivity, when a wave hits?'

This is not rational. Cost benefit analysis is not being applied., Given
that tsunami the last place to worry about was a power station where no
one died. Flood defenses where people died are surely more relevant.

Since windscale Britain has operated a lot of nuclear power stations
without any serious releases of radioactivity - Sellafield is far more
an issue than any power station, and yet you still feel fearful. Why?

France has run its nuclear fleet as has sweden, and Switzerland and even
the old sovbloc where standards are much lower the known death toll only
stands at 50 odd. And they have skads of nukes

There are about 440 reactors in the world. Three have melted down. all
were old designs. Between them they generate about 10% of the worlds
electricity. The total death count is 50 odd. At an ageing Russian
reactor run by communist ****s who didnt give a ****, because no one in
a communist society does,. More people die in oil and gas or in windmill
erection in a year.
That's the rational position. The emotional positions is 'we are scared
of it and its got to be 100% safe' Nothing is 100% safe.

You are far far more likely to be killed by a piece of ice flung off a
wind turbine than by power stations releases of radioactivity.

And far far more likely to die of cold when renewable energy shuts the
grid down


--
"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign,
that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."

Jonathan Swift.