Recent content by clancy688

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Because radiation and nuclear power is A Very Bad Thing indeed. Everybody knows this stuff is dangerous. We're constantly being told how evil this stuff is by the Anti-Nuclear-Lobby. Those paragons of fair- and scientifical correctness wouldn't tell nothing else but the truth, would they? And...

That's only what went into the atmosphere. According to IRSN, at least double that number again went into the ocean.

You have to differ. Plutonium is alpha decay. Alpha radiation is very powerful, but at the same time has only very little penetration ability. So little that it is stopped by the uppermost boundary of human skin - which consists mostly of dead cells. Therefore you don't need any lead glass...

Although I'm not sure about the "most" part of your statement, Plutonium is indeed very toxic and therefore dangerous. Inside the body. Unless I'm mistaken, nuclear warheads are normally stored outside the human body. As long as the scientists don't start eating the core, there'll nothing...

It is now. It wasn't always.

And U-238's decay is alpha, therefore the very little radiation which's produced won't be able to harm you (unless you inhale parts of the pottery...).

I wouldn't recommend OCZ drives. They have the highest failure rates of all manufacturers. The Crucial M4 is a good one, either that or a Samsung 840 (if you are able to obtain a Samsung 830 for the same money, go for this instead). 64 GB is to small, you should either go for 128 or 256 GB.

No. The SSD controller literally doesn't care on which NAND the wanted data sits. All locations are accesible equally, therefore defragmentating a SSD doesn't make any sense. To the contrary - since the SSD's NANDs have only a limited number of read/write cycles a defragmentation is very high...

Possible cause for the blackout: A rat may have short-circuited a switchboard. http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/20130320_28.html I'm at a loss for words...

High pressurized coolant would be ejected directly at the control rod drive. So I wouldn't consider this to be the "best place" to have a leak. In the worst case you have a loss of coolant accident AND troubles with inserting (damaged) control rods.

IRSN explaining the accident: Nothing new, but everything already uncovered neatly packed together with animations. :)

Okay, thank you very much. How dangerous is Tc-99, compared to Cs-137 or Sr-90?

"Radioactive waste will stay dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years" There's one statement which's always used by people opposed to nuclear power - that the waste will stay dangerous for thousands, ten thousands and even hundred thousands of years. But I'm wondering - is this accurate...

Well, doesn't the RCIC "drop" heat in form of steam into the wetwell which's part of the primary containment? Down there steam condenses and the resulting water is pumped into the RPV again (hot steam going down into the wetwell powers a pump which's transporting the water back up into the RPV)...