Re: Nuclear concerns growing.

I don't really care about how long nuclear waste remains harmful to us. It is enough for me to know that it is dangerous full stop and we should not mess with it.

The Chernobyl nuclear 'accident' happened 25 years ago and still to this day we have necessary controls on some of our sheep farms due wholly to radioactive contamination being showered on certain upland areas.

There were huge quantities of radioactivity released into the atmosphere following the disaster, mainly radiocaesium 137. The Cumbrian fells where sheep farming is the primary industry was hit more than any other region in the UK.

It just so happened that due to the particular type of peaty soil that we have in the area the radiocaesium was able to transfer from soil to grass so easy that it accumulated in the sheep. There were nearly 1700 farms affected and 4 million sheep placed under restriction following the accident and some still are today.

Norway is also a country that has and still has major problems with the results of Chernobyl. The Sami people who rely on the reindeer for their very existance have been hit particularly hard. The herders themselves still have ten times more radioactivity in their bodies than other norwegians and the animals still have to be fed special food before slaughtering, to reduce the levels of radiation in the meat.

That is just a couple of examples of the result of these 'accidents', perhaps the real affect on human lives will continue to be shrouded in mystery for the reasons of political expediency.

Re: Nuclear concerns growing.

we have one 2 hours away

Re: Nuclear concerns growing.

The faults with nuclear energy (at this time) are not with the nuclear reactors, per se, anymore than the fault of a large traffic accident on a highway is the fault of the automobiles. Both are human errors in design and implementation. I’d never belittle the disastrous effects on the European continent with respect to the Chernobyl disaster, but I was working in the nuke bizz at the time of the accident and I remember commenting to my partner as I watched it on TV during its early stages: “That building’s built like a matchbox. There’s going to be a serious accident there.” And sure enough, there was. But putting a reactor in a building with such minimal, or in some cases, non-existent safeguards and protection factors is a major error in design, engineering and human stupidity. The recent Japanese Fukushima disaster should never have happened. To put the back-up systems and controls in an unprotected secondary building when the plant sits next to the ocean is total engineering foolishness. Had that outer building had even a reasonable amount of protection from a tsunami wave, the back-up systems would have clicked in and there would have been only minimal damage and very easily repairable with NO radiation leaks.

The problem with nuclear energy is not our ability to build safe, dependable nuclear systems, but our refusal to do so. Stupid engineering blunders, cost-cutting moves that should never happen in such a ‘critical no-fail’ industry and human error from unskilled operators have made the nuclear industry far more hazardous than it should be. The world continues to expand its energy demands exponentially and it is folly to think that alternate energy sources will supply all of even current needs, let alone future ones. So we better get intelligent about nuclear power development and start treating it as a serious ‘no failure’ technology. We have the abilities. We have the proven technology. Yet we continue to build ‘matchbox’ plants like Chernobyl (or don’t shut them down and refit them when we do see problems) and make serious engineering blunders like at the Japanese Fukushima plant. There should be no excuse for these errors. They are completely unnecessary. And if we, as an intelligent scientific community, don’t smarten up, we’ll all be heating our homes with a wood fire, riding horses and sending smoke signals to communicate.

cdn guy

Re: Nuclear concerns growing.

Some interesting points but I cannot but help notice you only speak of 'matchbox' plants in Chernobyl or serious Engineering blunders at Fukushima, what about the rest of the world.

It cannot have escaped your notice that your own country is not immune and has had its disasters at Chalk River, way back in 1952 and 58 admittedly but there have been other reported 'issues' at the same plant far more recently.

It is common knowledge that worldwide there have been at least 33 serious nuclear accidents that we know of, ranging in severity from 1 to 7 on the INES scale. These figures are a matter of public record and taken since the first recorded one in 1952, coincedentally the aforementioned Chalk River at level 5 INES.

If we are to assume that these 'accidents' are all as you seem to suggest a result of poor design or build spec then we are indeed in an awful perilous state.

You say that the Fukushima disaster should never have happened, maybe you have a point in regard to location but then hindsight is a great thing to have. We must logically consider that the magnitude 9 earthquake was one of the largest in recorded history.

It actually moved parts of Japan 3 metres eastwards and slightly changed the speed of rotation of our planet. Combine the impact of this earthquake with the awesome power of a 15 metre high tsunami and you may just get an idea of the power of those two entities that struck the plant.
Possibly the buildings withstood the disaster better than anyone could have thought possible.

As far as heating our homes with a log fire, we already have to as the price of fuel these days is prohibitive thanks mainly to the demands of the gas guzzling folks across the pond and it is quite nice.

Come to think of it also, I quite fancy the idea of horse drawn transport again, far less noise and pollution and infinitely preferable to radiation poisoning.

Re: Nuclear concerns growing.

Well, I really didn’t want to get into an extensive debate on nuclear power here – firstly, it not being a good idea when one just joins a new forum and secondly, because ‘pro’ and ‘con’ personal opinions on nuclear power are seldom changed. I was just trying to make some points on nuclear power that many may not have been aware, and being an ex-employee in the field, I thought I might have something to contribute.

I didn’t feel a need to discuss all 33 nuclear incidents to make the points I was trying to make – is that how many there have been ?? ... I’ve never counted them before. So I used the two most recent and major examples. I am aware of the Chalk River incidents because I’ve worked there and am also aware of another Canadian accident that many don’t know about because I was part of it – on a ‘solution’ capacity, not as a ‘cause’. I’d have to examine each incident to comment on them, but in the examples I gave and both Chalk River incidents, accident was because of improper design and implementation (and I use the term ‘improper’ because technology existed at the time to eliminate the accident, but was not used), or human error, which is usually a result of inadequately trained personnel. And both these problems do not put us in ‘an awful perilous state’ (as you have said), but instead are easily fixable. Inadequacies in technology and engineering are not so easy to fix.

The Fukushima plant survived the earthquake – as it was designed to do. It didn’t survive the tsunami because critical cooling controls and back-up systems were housed in a non-shielded, non-watertight building on the ocean-side of the plant. This is a huge engineering blunder – considering that entire islands were wiped out along the same fault-line in the South Pacific just a few years before. Shielding and putting a watertight enclosure over that building would take a couple weeks of construction and for it not to be done is completely inexcusable. Had that been done, there would have been no accident. As to Chernobyl – that plant should not have been in operation, and the owners of the plant knew it at the time. Again, a bone-dumb mistake that should never have happened.

As to your comment: “the price of fuel these days is prohibitive thanks mainly to the demands of the gas guzzling folks across the pond” – yes, of course I noticed – I was taught in Economics 101 that increased demand and consumption lowers per unit cost. Since the petro-chemical industry does not appear to follow this basic economic trend, perhaps there is another reason for escalating gas prices other than the ‘gas guzzlers across the pond’ ??

cdn guy