Breaking News.. Brownsville Levee Near Cooper Nuclear Plant in Nebraska Just Broke! Here We Go !!!!

reply to post by muzzleflash

Nuclear 'fuel' material requires constant cooling for years. If it heats up significantly when not cooled, it begins to melt (nuclear lava = corium). Hot enough to melt through concrete. Several thousands of degrees.

if reactor cessation includes possibility to poison nuclear fission, continuous cooling for years ain't necessary.

reply to post by Nosred


So, I've been watching this from the side-lines, trying to keep to myself...but the urge to say this is too great.

Let's take Washington, DC. It's a city of 602,000 people. According to the latest statistics, the number of gun-related deaths was 31.4/100,000, or 189 people, in a single year.
Now, consider a nuclear bomb located somewhere in the city, capable of destroying the entire city (killing 602,000 people in the process). It has yet to go off, and, therefore, is responsible for no deaths at all. However, the bomb is armed and set to a random date and time.

According to these statistics, we are forced to conclude that the nuclear bomb is safer than guns.
Yet, that conclusion is preposterous.

In the same way, it is inaccurate to use past statistics to conclude that wind turbines are more dangerous than nuclear reactors. Continued use of nuclear reactors will, one day, lead to the deaths of millions of people, and, then, the statistics will finally show what people have been saying all along... but, at that time, it will be too late.

Wait, So radiation from the plant could leak into the water? This sounds extremely Planned! seriously, What country would LET that levee break if it was that kind of threat? I dont care, I would be stuffing Thousands possibly millions of sandbags behind that. This is crazy....

reply to post by kissitgoodbye


be hard for the government to say the have a better use for it beings its prime farm ground,be hard for the farmers to let it go for a cheap rate

Nice to know the same taxpayers footing the bill for these "cheapest energy cost" reactors are going to be forced to pay for the repairs and closure of these reactors, along with being strung with the catastrophic costs of these reactors if they go boom, because these private companies only want to pay for the cheapest insurance they can get away with, all while these same taxpayers are losing everything they own!!!

Cheapest form of energy, Nosred, for who??? Those receiving this corporate welfare, but certainly not the common citizens of our great country...................WTF!!!

edit on 24-6-2011 by RoyalBlue because: (no reason given)

not true as of yet the blame lies with the corps of engineers they will be the ones who cough up the money which means everybody who pays taxes will pay for this in the long run long live the Obama administration

reply to post by CLPrime


Nuclear reactors are not the same things as nuclear bombs, please stop fearmongering an being ignorant.

Edit: Also do you have any idea how stupid that sounds? You prefer the guaranteed deaths of thousands of people from lung cancer from fossil fuel pollutants over the incredibly small possibility that people could be killed by generation III nuclear reactors even though such a thing has never happened?

These pollutants are part of standard routine for fossil fuels, while for a generation III reactor it would take an extremely improbable accident (you have a better chance of getting struck by lightning) to kill someone. I'm sure if it was someone in your family on their deathbed with lung cancer you wouldn't be saying the same thing right now.

reply to post by Nosred


Wind turbines are also not the same as guns. I never claimed they were. But the analogy stands. The statistics are meaningless, given the potential for nuclear reactors to radioactively contaminate large portions of the planet. Just because that potential has yet to fully occur does not mean it should not be taken into consideration. Should we ignore the ticking bomb and just keep going blindly about our business until the day it blows up on all of us?

I guess we should only be acting to prevent potential disasters after they occur.

reply to post by CLPrime


Nuclear reactors are not ticking bombs, like I've said, you have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than a generation III reactor having a meltdown. How many times have you been struck by lightning in your lifetime? Is the lightning a ticking timebomb? Should you avoid going outside from now on?

Do you drive a car? You have a much higher probability of dying in a car crash and killing or injuring dozens of people in the process than generation III reactors have of melting down. Should we ban cars now since they're ticking timebombs?

Edit: Also see above post, I edited it.


Edit: The odds of getting struck by lightning are 1:280,000. The odds of a generation III reactor meltdown is 3:1,000,000,000. And that's assuming whatever caused the accident can't be fixed. How can you look at these numbers and tell me nuclear power is not safe, you have a bigger chance of dying from literally anything on Earth.

reply to post by Nosred


I have yet to hear anyone besides you mention fossil fuels. I have no wish to see fossil fuels take the place of nuclear power plants. I'd love to see both eliminated.

Nuclear reactors are not ticking bombs, like I've said, you have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than a generation III reactor having a meltdown.

This is exactly the kind of misuse of statistics that my first post was about. You cannot use the limited past occurrence of nuclear reactor accidents to justify the conclusion that they are safe. Lightning has been striking people for as long as people have been around. Generation III reactors have been around for 15 years.
A single nuclear reactor accident could kill more people than every fatal lightning strike in history.

I would much rather sit through a lightning storm than sit next to a nuclear reactor. Unfortunately, I've got both at the moment.

Originally posted by CLPrime
reply to post by Nosred

 

I have yet to hear anyone besides you mention fossil fuels. I have no wish to see fossil fuels take the place of nuclear power plants. I'd love to see both eliminated.

Solar and wind power are not viable energy sources, and hydroelectric power is too dangerous and destroys wildlife habitats. Solar and wind technology is not advanced enough to sustain the world it's either fossil fuels or nuclear, and whether you knew it or not you're arguing in favor of fossil fuels.

This is exactly the kind of misuse of statistics that my first post was about. You cannot use the limited past occurrence of nuclear reactor accidents to justify the conclusion that they are safe. Lightning has been striking people for as long as people have been around. Generation III reactors have been around for 15 years.
A single nuclear reactor accident could kill more people than every fatal lightning strike in history.

I'm not using past accident statistics, I used the core damage frequency statistic to determine this.

en.wikipedia.org...

I would much rather sit through a lightning storm than sit next to a nuclear reactor. Unfortunately, I've got both at the moment.

You'd rather sit through the thing that's more than a thousand times more likely to kill you? Do you have a death wish?

Originally posted by Nosred

 

I'm not using past accident statistics, I used the core damage frequency statistic to determine this.

en.wikipedia.org...

Yet, according to that, the historical core damage frequency is about 1 in every 2.62 years. How many years do we have to wait before one of those core damage incidents sparks a global disaster?

I would much rather sit through a lightning storm than sit next to a nuclear reactor. Unfortunately, I've got both at the moment.

You'd rather sit through the thing that's more than four hundred times more likely to kill you? Do you have a death wish?

I'd rather die from a lightning strike than from radiation poisoning.

reply to post by Nosred


Nosread, I would suggest to you to start your own thread about the safety of Nuclear energy. Anytime this subject is discussed, you make a post praising nuclear energy and then the subject get sidelined to a general argument instead of this specific incident. These arguments seem to be distracting from some basic facts/questions.

I have some questions pertaining to the thread topic:

1. Did the levee lower or raise the water level around the plant?
2. If the water level was lowered, doesn't it seem to be a great big coincidence? After all, if they wanted to force a breach, they would have to go to court and disclose info about the plant. Plus, the whole timing about the offer to buy the property is suspicious too.
3. If the level raised the level, buy how much. How much more water can the plant take on?
4. If there is no issue, why is the head of the Nuclear regulatory agency going to visit the plant?

Originally posted by CLPrime

Yet, according to that, the historical core damage frequency is about 1 in every 2.62 years. How many years do we have to wait before one of those core damage incidents sparks a global disaster?

en.wikipedia.org...

The core damage frequency for the most modern nuclear reactor is 3 core damage events per 1000 million reactor--year. The core damage frequency for the next generation of reactors will be even lower.

en.wikipedia.org...

I'd rather die from a lightning strike than from radiation poisoning.

A lightning strike would be incredibly more painful and has a higher probability of happening so like I said, do you have a death wish? There's a phone number I can give you if you're having suicidal thoughts.

Originally posted by Nosred

The core damage frequency for the most modern nuclear reactor is 3 core damage events per 1000 million reactor--year. The core damage frequency for the next generation of reactors will be even lower.

And, yet, the core damage frequency estimates for previous reactors was found to be wrong in practice.

In consideration of the topic, however, this is the last I'm saying on the matter. We should be focusing on the flooding...and making sure it keeps well away from both area reactors - which, at the moment, are safely under control.

Originally posted by CLPrime
And, yet, the core damage frequency estimates for previous reactors was found to be wrong in practice.

Were they? Where did you get this information from. The core damage frequency estimate for generation III reactors has been proven to be right in practice, judging by the fact that nobody has ever been hurt.

Can I ask you something? Let's say you're buying a car and you've narrowed it down to two cars you have to pick from. One of these cars has thousands of people who are injured and killed driving them every year, while the other has never been in a single accident in it's entire fifteen years on the market.

Which one of these cars are you going to buy, honestly, if you're basing this on safety alone?

In consideration of the topic, however, this is the last I'm saying on the matter. We should be focusing on the flooding...and making sure it keeps well away from both area reactors - which, at the moment, are safely under control.

Agreed.

reply to post by Nosred


To answer your first question, my source is the main Core Damage Frequency page you linked to, comparing the US and EU estimates with the actual historical incidence rate.

As for the second question, I think the answer is obvious - the car with highest safety record. But I'll leave it to anyone reading this to decide whether or not the comparison is legitimate.

reply to post by Nosred


Your talking stricly core damage, what about the people that have been involved in criticality accidents? Or the tritium leaking from the plants? Water leakage?

What about the people affected by fukushima and Chernobyl? We are talking tens of millions... Now how many people are struck by lightning? Each year? Added up, that is still less than just those 2 incidents alone.

I'm not sure if you are involved with the nuclear industry or are a shareholder or whatever, but anyone that believes the best way to make energy is to use an almost critical chunk of uranium to boil water is crazy.

No, I do not support the use of fossil fuels. What should be done, is to take all the subsidy money going into nuclear and the oil industry and put it into renewable. Then we would get somewhere quickly, whether its solar, which has more than enough, but lacks research money, wind or geothermal, which is a much better way to boil water.

Also, you talk about environmentalists making it hard to build new up to date reactors...well if it were not for these people all the out of date POS reactors would be all around just about every country.

And, if there is one thing that I want standards high on, it would be something like nuclear power.

Also, sure if we were updated on our reactors they would be safer, but, also quite a bit more costly, making it out of reach for poorer countries, meaning they would still be using this old tech.

To think that our technology would make nuclear so much safer is a little arrogant seeing we can't even deal with liquids, as we have plenty of oil spills....

Pred...

reply to post by predator0187


Fukushima and Chernobyl were not generation III reactors, therefore the rest of your post is invalid.

reply to post by Nosred


Awesome counter argument.

Percentage of gen 3 vs others?

Pred...