And one more:
Beer Baron 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 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.
I would suggest the book "Atomic Accidents". Great rundown of every atomic whoopsie worldwide and quite readable. It's not an anti-nuke diatribe but is written by a doctor of nuclear engineering.
Keith Tanner said:I would suggest the book "Aromic Accidents".
That sounds like a book I could have written. Although my wife is not convinced they're always accidents...
Duke said:And one more:
Hi, I'd like to introduce you to the US's actual worst nuclear disaster, Hanford:
Keith Tanner said:I would suggest the book "Aromic Accidents".
Those accidents would be very interesting
In reply to Javelin :
I did not watch that video but I am aware of Hanford and I did just go re-read the Wiki article about it, which includes an extensive section about environmental concerns.
Agreed, it is a terrible environmental situation that needs to be cleaned up. But so was Love Canal, which had zero atomic connection.
Also, everything about Hanford points to the dire need to replace older less efficient reactors with newer, safer reactors that produce an order of magnitude less radioactive waste and emit far less actual radiation than burning coal does. As an added bonus, modern fast reactors can actually burn radioactive waste that older designs are not efficient enough to extract energy from. So we could actually generate power while dealing with the waste problem.
At least I don't have a BMW....
Mr_Asa said:
That's it. That's the meme.
In reply to NickD :
They could have done themselves a favor and not explained past saying the cars would be MSRP.
they got mad that customers paid the target price of MSRP and "flipped" them, so Berk the customer and we are gonna put an extra 90K$ into the dealerships pockets.
Steve_Jones said:
It's mostly just salt anyways
a friend made this up for me. Sigh
Toyman! said:
Of course not. You're a BUNCH of burgers, steaks, pot roast, stew, and tacos de lengua.
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