NickD said:
NickD said:
I'd rethink that "stupid idiot" statement.
Badwater Basin, Death Valley, California is 86 meters below sea level.
This one's for Duke
In reply to Steve_Jones :
So so true. Definitely after about 1986, anyway.
NickD said:This one's for Duke
I'm not anti-nuclear. I feel like I dont know enough to have an opinion one way or another. But the meme makes the argument that the Chernobyl meltdown was caused by being ran by incompetent yes men and trying to operate as cheaply as possible. What on God's green earth would ever make you think that wouldn't also be the case if we had it here?
gearheadmb said:I'm not anti-nuclear. I feel like I dont know enough to have an opinion one way or another. But the meme makes the argument that the Chernobyl meltdown was caused by being ran by incompetent yes men and trying to operate as cheaply as possible. What on God's green earth would ever make you think that wouldn't also be the case if we had it here?
Because we were also building nuclear reactors at the same time and actually dealt with a comparable crisis. I know the "Chernobyl" miniseries was dramatized, but they researched their facts. Also watched a documentary on 3-mile island.
Chernobyl and the other related reactors were built differently from how everyone else did them. They cheaped out on the control caps that would allow them to tamp down a runaway reaction before it would cause a meltdown, and instead ended up speeding up the reaction and turning it into a giant bomb. Western built reactors didn't have the same problems.
The soviets dealing with everything at the reactor definitely made it more about trying to protect themselves from political repurcussions than doing it right.
3-mile island saw a similarly bad situation, but was caught before it could go full Chernobyl. The actual operators and techs in the U.S. were able and did act with autonomy and exercise personal best judgement to do the right thing. There were absolutely company yes-men who came in and tried to manage the cleanup by cutting corners and doing things as cheaply as possible, but the actual experts and techs had the authority to tell them "no". In the U.S. those people doing the right thing could be fired... but that's the worst of it. In the USSR, higher ups could have someone who said "no" killed or shipped off to Siberia.
gearheadmb said:
I'm not anti-nuclear. I feel like I dont know enough to have an opinion one way or another. But the meme makes the argument that the Chernobyl meltdown was caused by being ran by incompetent yes men and trying to operate as cheaply as possible. What on God's green earth would ever make you think that wouldn't also be the case if we had it here?
Because 3 Mile Island is the worst accident we've had here and there has been minimal long-term damage caused by it?
Also, modern nuclear plant designs are very very different - far safer, cleaner, and more efficient - than those built in the 1970s.
But uninformed terror over the nuclear boogeyman is keeping those older, dirtier, less efficient plants in operation because (at least in the US) it's pretty much impossible to build a new one thanks to protests and the resulting bureaucratic approvals nightmare.
jmabarone said:gearheadmb said:
I'm not anti-nuclear. I feel like I dont know enough to have an opinion one way or another. But the meme makes the argument that the Chernobyl meltdown was caused by being ran by incompetent yes men and trying to operate as cheaply as possible. What on God's green earth would ever make you think that wouldn't also be the case if we had it here?
Because 3 Mile Island is the worst accident we've had here and there has been minimal long-term damage caused by it?
Wasn't the exposure from 3 Mile the equivalent of everyone in the area getting a single X-ray?
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