Bubblehead1980,

well what form of energy are you in favour of? I think from a moral/environmental point of view the best,or closest to the best, would be stuff like wind, solar, wave and biomass energy, and maybe some others that I don't remember now. These haven't been invested in, the reasons behind might be due to intense lobbying from pro-nuclear/some other more polluting form of energy producers.

Nuclear, coal, hydroelectric (damming rivers etc.) seem all pretty popular and also all have some pretty significant environmental downsides. Now I don't claim to know the politics behind, say, the building of nuclear but I do know that it's a question of big, and I do mean BIG, bucks.

Here's a list of the most expensive things, make a note of the dams and nuclear plants. No. 6 is a 'thing' from Finland, a pretty sad endeavor, I might add.

"According to Professor Stephen Thomas, "Olkiluoto has become an example of all that can go wrong in economic terms with new reactors"" :D

How many people died in the Three Mile Island accident?

Zero

My favourite TMI story was when the lawyers were trying to claim that the radiation levels released at TMI were at a dangerous level. To give an example of normal background radiation, a sample was taken inside the courtroom. The people in the courtroom were receiving more scintillating radiation due to the granite used in the construction of the courtroom than was released by TMI.

Oops.

TMI still remains our worst commercial reactor accident (there have been worse non-commercial accidents though). If TMI is the worst commercial accident we have had, we have an excellent safety record.

I do not think that nuclear power is our permanent solution to our energy problems, but it is a great source we can use until we do find a better source.

With today's technology we can build null void reactors that can operate with a negative void coefficient as a back up "fail-safe" design. No longer is the objective to get the absolute most energy out of reactors, but to build them safely as we can always get more power out of two negative void coefficient reactors than one positive one.

Nuclear reactor technology is too varied and complex to be assigned a simple label of "safe" or "unsafe".

The reality is that there exists reactor designs that - because of the design itself - actually take DAYS from a major malfunction (say a total cooling failure) to going critical. This gives a window of response that all but insures that the reactor will be either fixed OR deactivated to avoid a meltdown.

To say nuclear power is not safe is to ignore reality, on purpose.

As to "storage" - I have to ask, why does everyone want to ignore new generation reactors that can burn 90% of the fuel, instead of the designs from the 50's and 60's that can only burn like 10% - and thus leave highly toxic wastes. I mean, a safe, clean reactor that puts out 10% of the current waste? With the money saved from storage alone, we could repurpose NASA - and let them shoot the stuff into Jupiter or some other gas giant (or maybe the sun???) where it can't do any damage and doesn't impeded future space travel. I mean - heck - if we shot the waste into the sun (and surely we could hit the thing, its not like its a small target and its own gravity would help!) - the waste would be burnt up before it even got close.

Don't get me wrong - but it seems to me solutions like that solve more than one problem without causing more of them. Come to think of it - using the sun for a giant garbage disposal since it would just burn it all up into component atoms and consume it all could actually be a useful idea for LOTS of things.......

Do you know what it would cost to send a few tons of toxic waste to the sun every few months? If you do that you can say bye, bye to cheap nuclear power for good IMHO.

Figure I better get these links in here. These were the first photos of the Zone I was able to see as an adult. There are a few videos there somewhere, too. They were taken by a lovely and adventurous gal named Elena.

http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chernobyl-revisited/

http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chernobyl...of-the-wolves/

She tends to keep her chapter links at the bottom of each page.

Her main page is here: http://www.kiddofspeed.com

I highly recommend giving her site a good browse.

As a kid living here in the US, Chernobyl was a scary thing. What Elena and others have contributed in photographs and video and written word has helped me obtain so much perspective on a subject I never had hope of knowing about. We were behind our own kind of Iron Curtain here, namely fear I guess. I never thought there would be a time when we could see inside (what was then) the Soviet Union.

I read a book named Voices From Chernobyl a few months ago. I read it cover to cover in one night and it broke my heart in many places. I gained a much better understanding of the catastrophe and why so many people were thrown into (or threw themselves into) such a dangerous predicament. Who else could have prevented a greater disaster than the men who heaved broken chunks of graphite shielding from the roof of the shattered power block, or the brave helicopter pilots that airlifted and dumped load after load of sand onto the molten core? Who else could have been there to tend to their pain afterward but their loved ones (and only those beloved that were allowed in to the hospitals)?

The links, the book, the knowledge I sought afterward, it has all given that frightened little American kid from '86 a sense of closure that could not have been attained without the information that has been brought to light in the years since. But I have to wonder now, what of those who were directly affected by the meltdown? Have they found peace and closure?

This may be a better link for the book:

http://www.powells.com/biblio/1564784010

I should also add, aside from all the heroism, that many of the folks in what is now the Zone knew nothing about radiation. They knew absolutely nothing except perhaps that the plant had blown up, that it had emitted a strange flame and odd-colored smoke. And not long after the plant blew they would know that they were to leave their homes, their livelihoods, their pets, many of their belongings, all of it indefinitely. There are those who never left, and there are those who missed home so much that they eventually found a way back.

Anyway, I had to share this with you. It's not an exercise in guided enlightenment. It's been an experience so far that, in a great sense, has taken a burden off my heart. To know what I know now is far more rewarding than the guilt I have carried for having hated the Soviets for so long... imagine that. An American so far removed from Soviet influence having any right whatsoever to hate them. And yet, when that plant blew... I will not share here that thought from so many years gone by. That was what I had learned then.

What I have learned since is that humanity is the core of our being, no matter our nationality or beliefs. I am thankful to have grown as far as I have and to discover what I have discovered within myself, and of our mutual struggles as an intelligent species. Hopefully there will be many more years of discovery to come.

I think I'm out of breath. *scoots the soapbox over for someone else*

Good find, thanks for posting.

Elenas pictures are beautifully haunting. I remember seeing them a few years ago when they were posted up in the GT here.
Nuclear power is always a iffy subject with me, because I live about four miles from two, well, one shutdown and in the process of being decommed, one operational and one more in the planning stages which'll probably be started on around 2018ish.
I'm rather fatalistic about it to be honest, if it happens it happens, but I've been around the station a few times on tours (well worth it) and the safety systems they have in place are pretty thorough, however I know that nothing is absolutely a hundred percent foolproof and there is a small but still real risk of a problem in which case my best hope is that the winds are blowing from the west or south-west or it's goodnight Irene. The government knows this, once upon a time they practiced evacuation drills in the local community, particularly amongst the elderly in care homes and the like. Now they don't bother as far as I know, a few years ago some Iodine tablets were handed out to people living two miles from the plant, but really, if it all went wrong, that's about as much help as a bottle of vodka and some tin foil.
On the upside, I wouldn't need to fork out for STALKER: Call of Pripyat... :hmmm:

My view of nuclear power as it stands is, from a consumer point I prefer cheaper electricity, who doesn't? We all use electricity, we all pretty much depend on it for our lives (and daily Subsim fix) therefore we want it to have as low a financial impact on our lives as possible. Human nature, we want the most we can get for the cheapest we can get. :yep:
However, nuclear waste is my primary concern, even over meltdowns and occasional radiation leaks (which we've also had up here), because that stuff glows for years. Even now that one of our local plants reactors has been shut down it's going to be a number of decades before the decommissioning process is complete.

Heh, and for an additional spot of fun, I just found this whilst looking through the wiki for the local NPP:

:har: Ok, like I said...not every safety system is a hundred percent foolproof! :har:

Can someone fill me in with what the deal is with the sarcafogus (sp??)


Did they bury part of the plant and everything in it (and including a body (bodies?)) to keep radiation from spreading?

Yes, it was primarily to contain the molten core and resultant radiation. Otherwise it might make a nifty BASE leap. :)

All kidding aside, what they built then is now in poor condition and there are plans to build another one to cover the first. I'll have to dig up those old links - that were on the now defunct hard drive. :o

Anytime, and thank you.

Did you have your 100ml of vodka today, comrade? :)

What gets me, being a purebred Idahoan, is that one of the US' primary nuclear power test/development sites (at least throughout the fifties) sits directly on top of the aquifer that supplies much of the agricultural and drinking water for the state. My dad some years ago worked for the USGS, drilling into and sampling the aquifer under the site for isotopes. He wasn't allowed to divulge much to us, just that he was drilling. What's even scarier is that the site is now owned and operated by Lockheed... but that may be a topic for future conversation.

Basicly, the sacrophagus is failing, if it falls tonnes of radioactive dust will be send to not so good places.

Alright, thanks guys. Terrible event, just wanted to make sure I have my facts right in case it ever gets brought up, I now have an educated point of views on the subject.

in case you havent read the article its quite educational.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster

I spent so much time cruising her site. She put a new section up at some point, in which she presents her and friends' efforts at unearthing artifacts from the battles around Kiev during WWII. They must have some ice water in their veins or something.

http://www.theserpentswall.com/

Far as I can tell there aren't any nuclear power stations near where I live. OTOH, I remember my grandmother making a joke once about the yellow pollen from the pine trees. As I recall it, she once told an out-of-towner that it was just dust picked up from the Hanford Site by the wind. :har:

:hmmm:
A new video game?

Cheap electricity is definitely a good thing, especially when it comes to making inroads here at Subsim (and keeping my beer chilly).

I remember all the huff in Idaho about the government shipping waste across the state, particularly the storage of some of those materials at The Site. I certainly had my concerns about the storage aspect, in light of the research my Dad had participated in with the USGS. But any way we look at it, whether it be stored in the Idaho desert or buried elsewhere, the energy source produces it and it has to go somewhere.

Yes, reports such as that inspire so much faith in the integrity of the systems, don't they? :rotfl2: Pretty minor to what the systems are designed to circumvent, though. I'll give it that. :)


Anytime Chad. :salute: I used to have a folder stuffed with bookmarks on the Chernobyl and related subjects, but that computer was greased and I lost everything. The Nuclear Files website has an extensive list of links to filter through, if you're interested. Have a looksee under the Library link on the top menu.

Wow, reading the wikipedia article really puts the pictures to shame. I pictured Nuclear Meltdown the same as when the Atomic bombs were dropped, mass destruction. The destruction this caused was more invisible, and, appears more catastrophic in the long run.

I was reading about how forest fires can release toxins that are in the ground, and the amount of land and forest that has been destroyed is crazy!

We have 10 acres of land at my parents house, I can't even begin to imagine 5,772 or even 1,240 acres of burning land.

If you read the article you posted you'd note that:

A. This stuff was buried when it was a landfill so implying that they would deliberately bury it in a park is dishonest.

B. "The level of radiation was very low; a U.S. Department of Energy official characterized the radiation as equivalent to 1/70th of a dental X-ray"

C. The area was part of a wetland area in the park and not normally used by visitors. Apparently the kids were in fact not playing on it.