WHY DO YOU FEAR..........NUCLEAR ENERGY? (page 2)

Substandard facilities operated by communist bureaucrats in a system that rewards cronies and not excellence of performance. Like anything built by such a system the breakdown exposed the astonishing laxity of inspection and quality-control in the U.S.S.R.

The impact of vast oil spills by tankers have wreaked damage on the oceans for many decades. Any time humans operate without checks and balances they will create hazards and blowback.

When coal was the source of fuel the pollutions created air that was so acid-laced & toxic you could die in certain quarters of Great Britain just by trying to breathe!

The focus has to be on quality, excellence and inspection and not on fear engendered by the worst of incompetences wrought by the most ill-informed social systems.

T.

BrendaCloutier

I don't. I fear mechanical and human failure.

However, I believe that today's nulear energy is far safer than it was in the 1960's when it was being built and put into service in the US. So many of those plants are now shut down, and will remain a nuclear hazzardous waste site for centures.

tetrapod.sapien

i'm not fearful of nuclear energy at all. i wonder how much energy is required to run a reactor, and if the energy the reactor generates goes toward the running of the reactor or not. i would hate to see a reactor powered by an outside source like fossil fuels.

but generally, i have no real problem with it. the possible violent problems that may come from ignoring nuclear energy, are worse than any possible environmental problems that may come from having a reactor somewhere. i would prefer nuclear energy to a war with china over fossil fuels.

TS

DanTheMan

All it takes is one serious screw-up or one highly coordinated and ingenious terrorist attack to cause a plant to go Chernobyl and cause massive environmental (oops, sorry for cussing) damage and bring untold death to plants, animals, and humans in a large area.

I'm not an "anti-nuke" (these sneering contemptuous labels are helpful to nobody, although I'm guilty of the practice myself) but come on! Am I wildly paranoid or ill-informed to have reservations about nuclear power? Sheesh!

Gill

Terry - THREE MILE ISLAND? (ADOPTED STATE OF THE USSR?)

jeeprube

I think we should build them.

They are safe people, stop being so scared.

DannyHaszard

Danny Haszard's experiences with the Jehovah's Witnesses as a worker at the Seabrook Nuclear plant early to mid 1980's (1) some had contempt for me earning a living at an installation that will be destroyed by Jehovah when he,"brings to ruin those who are ruining the earth".In fact one MS at the Laconia New Hampshire Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses refused to work there (conscience reasons) when prompted by the state department of employment and in so doing lost out on his unemployment insurance checks. (2) some where jealous that i had a high paying skilled union job that gave me a better 'rating' as a potential marriage mate vs window washing and burger flipping. I had the unique experience with social interaction with thousands of 'worldlings' as my workmates and this frame of reference with 'normal people' was to help in my recovery and exit from the WT cult a few years later.Gee,what if i had 5 years of college life? My engineering perspective- I had also worked at a 500 megawatt coal fired plant that burned 40 train box cars a day of dirty coal and it emitted MORE radiation in the heavy metal ash of radioactive isotopes that went up the stack than a properly run nuke plant per watt of power. Know this!The sun our star IS the perfect nuke plant and it's 93 million miles out,it bombards our planet with 120 TRILLION HORSEPOWER EVERY SECOND,and requires no maintenance from us. The hydrogen (food of the stars) initiative fuel cells and fusion presently IS the wave of the future! There will be a breakthrough in electrical solar cell power output,but until that time a nuke plant the size of seabrook is equal to 650 SQUARE MILES of solar cells and will produce rain or shine. I worked there for 5 years on all 3 shifts and have experienced working outside at night with 80 below zero wind chill. The reactor containment building is the world's strongest structure and is designed to withstand a direct hit from a 580 ton 747 aircraft @ 500 miles per hour. The pump house that provides the all important cooling water is an 'inverted siphon' so that water will always flow into the reactor by gravity alone if it's 6,000 horsepower pump fails. The non radioactive coolant that cools the steam condenser flows back out to the ocean and it's ambient temperature is increased by only 5 degrees F. and the sea life like it. New England sits in the middle of the tectonic plate which west end plagues California so it is considered earthquake safe. The cost overruns which made the plant cost soar are due to excessive safety redundancy brought on by hysteria. Example-the coal fired plant i worked on would bust several times a week and no emergency hysteria except more overtime pay for me. Even the most anti-nuke activist concede that the U238 fuel in the fuel rods can never explode like an atomic bomb. The big fear is a LOCA Loss Of Coolant Accident,dramatized as the 'China syndrome' the starved for coolant (plain tap water) porous fuel rods will melt into a 4,000 degree solid mass and when this happens water is split into it's two molecules of hydrogen and oxygen and fill the reactor building with this explosive gas (rocket fuel) and will 'blow the roof off the containment building' releasing a most deadly plume of death.It cannot 'melt down into the earth and go to china'. Seabrook had $500 Million dollar (waste) back up cooling tower that will NEVER be used because the reactor is cooled by the Atlantic ocean.It was built in case the ocean recedes TWO MILES beyond the sump intake that is two miles out. Another blunder is the plant is a 'set 'n forget' one time installation with a life of only 40 years,so Seabrook is half done already. Conventional plants on the other hand are like vintage automobiles you keep up with retrofits and repairs. The radioactive waste is in the spent fuel rods that stay entombed at the plant and must be cooled for a lifetime. Final anecdote,on intelligent design some astrophysicist and geologist wonder if our earth is one of a kind,because the radioactive heavy metals were 'stirred' by convection during the earths formation otherwise the heavy stuff would have all sunked to the earth's core,and be unavailable for mining.

stillajwexelder

I had also worked at a 500 megawatt coal fired plant that burned 40 train box cars a day of dirty coal and it emitted MORE radiation in the heavy metal ash of radioactive isotopes that went up the stack than a properly run nuke plant per watt of power. Most people (>99%) do not realize and appreciate this

Preston

What I believe about nuclear energy is how I feel about all means of energy. We live in a free market society, well....here in the U.S. anyway, and therefore we should put on the market as many sources of energy as possible. Conumers should have the right to decide what fuel they should use or not rather than being 100% dependent on oil.

- Preston

WHY DO YOU FEAR..........NUCLEAR ENERGY?

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