Let me give you my anti nuclear manifesto. The problem with nuclear power is two fold. First, no one has EVER given a reasonable answer as to what to do with the waste that lasts forever, and no, burying it in rusty steel barrels is NOT acceptable. The other problem is people.
Nuclear power will always be inherently unsafe because people have an unerring propensity to fuck up. When designing a nuke plant, there is not a lot of room for design mistakes. I have worked with engineers, they make mistakes all the time. Lets assume that the engineers come up with the perfect design(unlikely). That is just the first phase of the atomic circus. Now it is time to actually build it.
Of course the engineers have specified the very best quality grade A+ concrete and steel. Who is going to build this, Haliburton? Look at the big dig, can you picture those assholes building a nuke plant? No matter how much legit profit is being made you can guarantee the construction douche bags will cheat on materials to fatten the profit margin, where grade A+ cement is called for they will use grade D, the same with the steel and other materials. You will wind up with a plant that is safe on paper, and would have been OK if built the way it was supposed to be that is a time bomb. Wait, last but not least, now it is built and it is time to actually run it.
So now you have the possibility of design defects, the absolute surety of shoddy construction and Homer Simpson shows up for work. Of course Homer isn't scared, didn't they show him how safe the plant was? I have never seen a situation where people failed to fuck up whenever the opportunity presented itself, what makes matters much worse is that Homer Simpson thinks the safety margin is much
higher than it actually is, as grade A+ steel and cement can take a lot more abuse than the shitty grade D materials the construction assholes used. So there you have it, the three stooges, the Engineers, the construction company, and the people running the plant.
Nuclear power will always be inherently unsafe because people have an unerring propensity to fuck up. When designing a nuke plant, there is not a lot of room for design mistakes. I have worked with engineers, they make mistakes all the time. Lets assume that the engineers come up with the perfect design(unlikely). That is just the first phase of the atomic circus. Now it is time to actually build it. 
Of course the engineers have specified the very best quality grade A+ concrete and steel. Who is going to build this, Haliburton? Look at the big dig, can you picture those assholes building a nuke plant? No matter how much legit profit is being made you can guarantee the construction douche bags will cheat on materials to fatten the profit margin, where grade A+ cement is called for they will use grade D, the same with the steel and other materials. You will wind up with a plant that is safe on paper, and would have been OK if built the way it was supposed to be that is a time bomb. Wait, last but not least, now it is built and it is time to actually run it. 
So now you have the possibility of design defects, the absolute surety of shoddy construction and Homer Simpson shows up for work. Of course Homer isn't scared, didn't they show him how safe the plant was? I have never seen a situation where people failed to fuck up whenever the opportunity presented itself, what makes matters much worse is that Homer Simpson thinks the safety margin is much 
higher than it actually is, as grade A+ steel and cement can take a lot more abuse than the shitty grade D materials the construction assholes used. So there you have it, the three stooges, the Engineers, the construction company, and the people running the plant.
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And your better idea is..?
ReplyDeleteI read somewhere that using thorium is far less risky than plutonium, and the half life is much shorter too. Sounds swell, but all I've heard recently are more plans to build the old school plutonium plants.
ReplyDeleteI'm rather sick of the argument against alternative energy which is "we tried that in the 70's, it didn't work." I think that technology has advanced significantly since then and more research needs to be done. Maybe build some thorium plants until the efficiency of solar and wind gets to the point where they can pick up the slack.