From: Anne Marie Tobias (atobias@interwoven.com)
Date: Fri Jun 01 2001 - 11:53:29 MDT
I agree the book "We almost lost Detroit" is chilling... I beg to differ
about Brown's Ferry, which survived not because it's design proved
viable, but simply because after an amazing chain of stupid mistakes,
starting with the design, running through maintenance, and ending in
pitiful management, a dedicated team of engineers and technicians
hand pumped water through the core to prevent the ultimate crisis.
Thank God! we don't build plants like that anymore!!!
As for the cost of nuclear, I think it sad that nobody has mentioned
the legacy of virtual genocide committed against Native Americans
who live near the mines the government ramrodded onto their space.
The results of radioactive mine tailings and heavy metal contamination
has rendered many western reservations nearly uninhabitable. Those
tribes that bore the brunt of our hunt for uranium, now suffer a legacy
of birth defect, soaring cancer rates, and remarkably high infant
mortality (even above and beyond that of other tribes.)
I think an ethanol economy is an awesome idea... it's renewable, you
can make it from any organic matter, if you use natural organics (lawn
and tree clippings, kelp, reeds and rushes, farming byproducts, waste
paper, and organic city refuse (a terrible problem in of itself), you end
up with no (read 0) green house gas net increase, it's got a high oxygen
content, and burns very clean with virtually no soot or contamination,
and you can use it in virtually every kind of powerplant from fuel cells,
to cars, to large scale power station. It's safer than gasoline, with none
of the environmental costs associated with fossil fuels, and it's even a
fuel you can make at home (that bothers the hell out of certain business
folks.) Actually this is good, because you can scale production right
down to local municipality, and that makes communities energy safe
and independent, and eliminates the cost of fuel transport (this is one
more reason that energy cartels hate ethanol.)
I also agree that nuclear looks excellent off planet, by far the best way
to go for energy sources on the moon and mars. I still find myself a bit
squeemish about waste handling, the serptitious use of waste for nukes
by our government (who by the way has a devastatingly bad rep for
the improper use, storage, and handling of nuclear materials), and the
messy process of decomissioning reactors (and despensing with the
contaminated building materials and reactor site.)
We need to look at all the cost/benefits when picking a viable energy
source... producing nuclear power for pennies isn't cheap if you're up
to your eyeballs in government subsidized cleanup messes, and eco
disasters that take your tax dollars to fix. We need to be asking neither
the environmental extremists, nor the businesses with a vested money
interest, but nonaffiliated scientists who are experts in this field. Ask
them what makes good sense, and what is economically, socially, and
enviornmentall viable in the long term. Then compare that against other
good alternatives.
We need to walk away from fossil fuels soon... they are problematic.
That, and in the end we have much better use for all that carbon. We
need to bring high tech to the third world so they can circumvent the
first world's eco-blunders. We need to ask hard questions about the
trade-off between economic viability, environmentally sound use, and
the growing need for energy that scales with the demand of our ever
increasing technology.
Marie Tobias
Chuck Kuecker wrote:
> At 12:31 AM 6/1/01 -0700, you wrote:
> >Windscale. Idaho Falls. Brown's Ferry. Three Mile Island. Chernobyl.
> >Who needs terrorists? Another Chernobyl seems far more likely.
> >
> >jm
>
> Chernobyl was a design for failure, and built without any kind of realistic
> containment. To top it all off, experiments to draw power from the energy
> stored in the graphite core were run while the cooling system was partially
> disabled.
>
> Windscale was an AIR_COOLED reactor, and guess where the air came from?
> They did install filters in the exhaust path, but the fire did a number on
> them. To the credit of the British, I don't believe they built another one
> like that. Along those lines, you forgot a couple of nuclear rocket
> experiments in Nevada that had fission products in the exhaust.
>
> Brown's Ferry proved that the safety systems work. Stupidity in using
> flammable wiring and a worker using a flame to check for air flow damaged
> the cabling, but the reactor remained safe. A success.
>
> Three Mile Island released no significant radiation to the environment. The
> containment worked.
>
> We have the technology to produce SAFE reactors, if only someone will allow
> them to be developed. Again, I must bring up the IFR at Argonne Labs, that
> Clinton's administration killed off so efficiently.
>
> A really scary one that everyone ignores was the Fermi plant outside
> Detroit in the 1970's - a liquid sodium cooled fast breeder that actually
> had a meltdown due to last minute addition of "safety" devices not in the
> original plans. Check out the book "We Almost Lost Detroit".
>
> Chuck Kuecker
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