Re: Global warming: caveats and musings?



On Thu, 18 Oct 2007, Old Pif wrote:

On Oct 18, 8:59 pm, Straydog <a...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

It's two things: i) a big plug for more nuclear power plants!


Nothing is wrong about nuclear power plants. The fact the the Russians
could not keep them safe does not mean that the others fail as well.

I found, at a library book sale, the following book:

"The Accident Hazards of Nuclear Power Plants" by Richard E. Webb
(Univ Mass Press, 1976). Although not new, the whole book contains a list of failure modes, summaries of deliberate (real) tests on small models (with critical mass fissionable material) to let them blow up (including one photograph of a reactor blowing up), and two appendices. Appendix two has this list (I'm typing it now):

EBT-1 Core Meltdown (p. 187)
Fermi Reactor Partial Fuel Meltdown (189)
Shippingport PWR steam generator drop (192)
Hanford Reactor Failure to SCRAM (192)
BWR SCRAM system failure (193)
B-52 SAC bomber crash close to a BWR (194)
Vermont Yankee BWR Criticality Incident (195)
Loss-of-cooland incident in a BWR (196)
Browns ferry BWR cable fire (198)
Cracks in the emergency core cooling systems piping at a BWR (200)
Loss of collant accident in a gas-cooled reactor (switzerland) (201)
SL-1 reactor runaway explosion (201)
Windscale reactor meltdown (england) (201)

The book has a chapter titled "Eleven: Remarks on Sabotage and Other Considerations"

The author is not a left-wing-commie-pinko-luddite but a PhD in Nuclear Engineering, was employed by the (at that time) Atomic Energy Commission for six years and by industry for research and development of nuclear power. The book has a large reference list to other documents, govt and scholarly journals.

I will agree (with the caveat that I have not checked the details of recent safety history of reactor problems, but I did read one article in a power magazine that nuclear reactors are still not on-line to the design specs yet, and still have technical problems) that they are being run more carefully these days than decades ago. The one change over these decades is that the AEC (a former subsidy and promoter of the nuclear industry), now transformed into the NRC (a distinct regulatory agency) has slowly and progressively _required_ that the power reactors upgrade all of the safety features and operating proceedures so that, today, we should have _less_ accidents than in the past. From articles in the WSJ the economic history of nuclear power plants is terrible (cost overruns, delays in completion, failures in safety inspections, big court cases, bond defaults, several plants not even finished). Most existing plants were designed for a lifetime of something like 20 years and then were supposed to be decommissioned; in fact, the power industry has gotten the NRC to re-license them beond their design life and I wonder how many are ready to fall appart any day. With a new wave of reactors likely to be built in the next 10-15 years, you guys will see if any new technologies that look good on paper will deliver in reality. At my age I think I'll be
dead before I see any of the new wave actually putting out juice and making the environment glow at night while causing extra genetic mutations.

I
think it is the right time to revive the branch.


I have already seen the lobbyists and PR efforts all doing their best to tell the public about the benefits and, strangely, nothing about the hazards.
.

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