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Originally Posted by Mikhayl
LOL, what's with the comparison with car accidents ?
I'm well aware that nuclear plants are quite safe, but still I can't see how they could be less dangerous (potentially that is) than kites or wind turbines. And yet politics (at least here) make much more fuss about the latter, pretending that they care about things they never considered when it came to build a nuclear plant or the like.
For example, you say "I also wonder, at a height of 800 meters, how many private aircraft are going to end up flying into the kites and how many animal activists are going to complain about the possible impact on migratory birds."
For nuclear plants there's simply "forbidden zones" for aicrafts and it has never been a problem, so it shouldn't be an issue for kites. As for animals, it's good to be concerned about it, but how many small species get covered in concrete when a nuclear plant is built ?
Not having a go at you, just trying to make myself clearer  |
No offense taken
The comparison with car accidents was to point out that something that many of us do each day is more of a danger than something (nuclear power plants) that many view with extreme fear.
My remarks regarding airplanes and birds was partially a joke at folks that worry about that a lot. Your analogy of "forbidden zones" doesn't work for wide areas of objects 800 meters in the air, though. Nuclear power plants have forbidden zone above them to reduce the possibility of aircraft coming close enough to the ground to strike them (and the obvious, to attempt to reduce the chance of a terrorist attack on one). I'm sure that those "forbidden zones" are violated more than we like to think about, but there is no calamitous result because the plane has to be pretty close to the ground to strike the nuclear power plant. People take private planes in lots of places they shouldn't go (like into buildings in New York City, and into power lines and cell phone towers, etc......) so I don't think it's unwise to think about "what if" a plane ends up somewhere it shouldn't be when you are talking about something as far in the air as these kites would be. It seems to me, that the closer you get to "civilization" (as we like to call population intensive areas), the less safe these things would be, so now we're talking about having them in sparsely populated areas. Helpful in areas of low power usage, certainly, but not the solution to large power needs.
As for small species being covered in concrete when a nuclear power plant is built, I would hope they would be intelligent enough to run when the cement truck showed up.
Again, I was more poking fun at the folks that worry about that type thing, so we're on the same page.
To make myself totally clear, perhaps I took your comment about more safety concerns over kites vs nuclear power plants incorrectly. I felt that you were more poking fun at folks that thought that nuclear power was safe than at those that worry about birds flying into kites
My bad if I came to the wrong conclusion (it happens, especially in print vs. face to face).
Edit : I totally forgot to take in the "(potentially that is)" part of your post. I'll be first to agree that the potential for disaster is there with nuclear power and on a scale much greater than anything a bunch of kites could cause. So far, due to many factors, nuclear power has been safer (in terms of life lost) than older forms of power generation. Considering that, in this country at least, there haven't been any deaths (that I can find) caused by nuclear power production it would be hard to have a better record.