- #36
turbo
Gold Member
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Is that a tube of lip-gloss in your pocket?mgb_phys said:Put the TSA in charge?
Is that a tube of lip-gloss in your pocket?mgb_phys said:Put the TSA in charge?
MotoH said:The Taliban would get it from Russia. Pakistan is pulling away from the Taliban right now because the US is telling them too, and India is backed by the US.
Dont forget that we had Baradar captured a long time ago, but the Pakistani government told us to let him go.
turbo-1 said:Have you evaluated the security systems of a nuclear-power site? Believe me, it's not just high-end rent-a-cops at checkpoints. You'd be be surprised how many interlocking security systems surround each such plant. Not just fences, sensors, cameras, guards... I shouldn't get into too much more detail than the obvious, but our nukes are well-monitored.
Ivan Seeking said:...and people who fall asleep on the job. A camera monitored by a sleeping or otherwise distracted person, has no value.
What gets me isn't just that it happened, it happened soon after 911. What happens after people begin to relax?
It's not asserted that it is easy; it is asserted that it is difficult but catastrophic.Doug Huffman said:Re 'dirty bomb', if it was so easy then everyone would do it.
I doubt that people who would fly planes into buildings would get hung up about acute exposure for the chance to empty out a small city.Calculate the mass specific activity for your favorite nuclides. I think that you'll find that ones with sufficient activity to be particularly difficult to clean up can't be assembled in a large mass without acute exposure problems. ...
I point to the civilian sector as an example nuclear power made safe from accidents. To my knowledge, nobody's ever suffered any radiological problems from the operation of a nuclear pressurized water reactor (PWR) commercial design. I'm less sanguine about nuclear proliferation.Ivan Seeking said:People often point to our military as an example of nuclear power made safe. Okay, fine, let's do that. Use the military.
MotoH said:Deaths from US Nuclear Reactor programs: 0
Ivan Seeking said:http://www.aolnews.com/article/obama-backs-nuclear-plants-with-billions-in-loans/19360343
While in principle I don't support the use of nuclear power, the pro-nuclear people here and the lack of available options have worn me down. I think we need to pursue other options with great diligence, but nuclear power seems to be an unavoidable evil.
Also, I trust Obama's good judgement.
Just another hole in the boat for those who recklessly apply "liberal" labels to Obama.
MotoH said:Deaths from US Nuclear Reactor programs: 0
mheslep said:I point to the civilian sector as an example nuclear power made safe from accidents. To my knowledge, nobody's ever suffered any radiological problems from the operation of a nuclear pressurized water reactor (PWR) commercial design. I'm less sanguine about nuclear proliferation.
The words sound promising, but it confuses me too. He's still stalling on the nuclear waste issue (where's my Yucca report?) and $8.3 B is a fairly small sum considering the cost of a nuclear plant and the size of the stimulus bill. Yet there is political risk in even saying what he's saying.Doug Huffman said:Right. Without 'permanent' waste disposal like Yucca Mountain, that TOTUS closed, it's empty posturing. Welcome to the third world banana 'republic' of Obamanation!
What is already done to work around the human error element is to simply engineer human error (and a host of other potential errors) out of the equation. You engineer plants that fail off instead of failing on.Ivan Seeking said:The video tapes of not one, but two security guards at nuclear power plants, sleeping while on-duty, not long after 911, did not convince me that we have anything even close to a failsafe system. That showed me that for all of the posturing, there is no way to control the human element...
We were told this was all safe even while three mile island was on the verge of melting down; while the two most knowlegable people in the country were screaming at each other and didn't know what to do...
Yes, one thing about risks is the risk of losing one city, based even on the worst potential projections by assuming all reactors are as bad as Chernobyl, is still very low. And more importantly, we'd have to lose a city every 10 years or so to compare to the people that already die due to regular air pollution.But, at this point energy independence is probably more important that safety concerns. Better to potentially lose one city than all of them. Also, the sooner we can gain energy independence, the sooner we can get out of the ME. Ultimately, our need for oil is the reason that we have terrorists.
Nevertheless, you are basing your fear on something, aren't you? What is your source for believing there is a terrorism threat lurking in our nuclear plants? And a clarification I'd ask for:I don't know what sort of operation we might need to prepare for. Do you? Please provide your sources.
Your use of the word "proliferation" is confusing to me. Proliferation is other countries getting the capability to generate their own nuclear fuel, isn't it? What you are really worried about is people stealing our nuclear fuel, right?My biggest concern is the proliferation of nuclear materials; for dirty bombs, for example.
That maybe correct, I don't know, but I'm sceptical. The answer to that question must require some fairly sophisticated analysis to a difficult problem. The lesson of Three-Mile Island is that containment works. It is far from clear, to me at least, that a 'few knowledgeable people' could blow open the containment, assuming they could melt down a modern reactor.Ivan Seeking said:All of these allusions to the past are moot. We now live in a world of terrorism - foreign and domestic. If a few knowledgeable people were to gain access to and control of a nuclear plant, and had the proper materials, could they cause a catastrophic failure and meltdown?
Yes.
Of course it is. Observation provides evidence over time, not certainty. The lack of an event for ~100 reactors over 30-50 years is a significant data point, though it is not conclusive. It is very suggestive, for instance, that adding, say, 10% more reactors is not going to change the reality of whatever risk we have now. I'd be much more concerned about a plan to build another 500 reactors in 20 years, in that case I'd like to know much more about the risk.The fact that we've never had a catastrophic event, is not an argument.
No, but neither can you. It isn't any more reasonable to assume they'd be devistating than it is to assume they wouldn't. And based on how low the actual physical risks really are, I tend to suspect the phsychological risks would work themselves out relatively quickly.Proton Soup said:can you calculate the psychological and economic effects (beyond the cleanup) of an "ineffective" dirty bomb ?
This is why I don't trust Obama: He promised us he'd create a commission and they'd have an answer by now. And he hasn't done it yet. This ain't like 'Gitmo - he could have kept this promise with the simple stroke of a pen. Why didn't he?Ivan Seeking said:What we will do with the spent material is also a valid concern. Obama want's a bipartisan commission to sort this out.
A Google for "nobody has ever died from nuclear power" turns up a host of results confirming at least the spirit of the claim. The claim wasn't quite specific enough, though. It should be 'No one has ever died from radiation from a western nuclear power plant'. There are other forms, though, such as:Cyrus said:Source? (I happen to know that's wrong).
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/energymyths/myth7.htmAccording to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, "Since commercial nuclear power plants began operating in the United States, there have been no physical injuries or fatalities from exposure to radiation from the plants among members of the U.S. public."
Indeed, with all the Russian nuclear fuel people assume is available on the black market, it makes me wonder why people are worried at all about the security of American nuclear fuel.Ivan Seeking said:We are working closely with Russia and other former Soviet States, to contain all nuclear materials. They also see this as a highest priorety.
When the Soviet collapsed, the security of their nuclear materials were seriously compromised. In many cases, guards at nuclear facilities, including weapons facilities, left their posts to go find food. Others left because they were no longer receiving any pay.
Source and specificity? Certainly, they could cause a "catastrophic failure", but what does that even mean? Can they cause a "China syndrome"? Certainly not? Chernobyl? Certainly not. TMI? Certainly. But if TMI is all terrorists are capable of doing, then there is no real public health risk.Ivan Seeking said:All of these allusions to the past are moot. We now live in a world of terrorism - foreign and domestic. If a few knowledgeable people were to gain access to and control of a nuclear plant, and had the proper materials, could they cause a catastrophic failure and meltdown?
Yes.
Operating nuclear reactors contain large amounts of radioactive fission products
which, if dispersed, could pose a direct radiation hazard, contaminate soil and vegetation,
and be ingested by humans and animals. Human exposure at high enough levels can
cause both short-term illness and death, and longer-term deaths by cancer and other
diseases.
To prevent dispersal of radioactive material, nuclear fuel and its fission products are
encased in metal cladding within a steel reactor vessel, which is inside a concrete
“containment” structure. Residual heat from the radioactive fission products could melt
the fuel-rod cladding even if the reactor were shut down. A major concern in operating
a nuclear power plant, in addition to controlling the nuclear reaction, is assuring that the
core does not lose its coolant and “melt down” from the heat produced by the radioactive
fission products within the fuel rods. Therefore, even if plant operators shut down the
reactor as they are supposed to during a terrorist attack, the threat of a radioactive release
would not be eliminated.
Commercial reactor containment structures — made of steel-reinforced concrete
several feet thick — are designed to prevent dispersal of most of a reactor’s radioactive
material in the event of a loss of coolant and meltdown. Without a breach in the
containment, and without some source of dispersal energy such as a chemical explosion
or fire, the radioactive fission products that escaped from the melting fuel cladding mostly
would remain where they were. The two meltdown accidents that have taken place in
power reactors, at Three Mile Island in 1979 and at Chernobyl in the Soviet Union in
1986, illustrate this phenomenon. Both resulted from a combination of operator error and
design flaws. At Three Mile Island, loss of coolant caused the fuel to melt, but there was
no fire or explosion, and the containment prevented the escape of substantial amounts of
radioactivity. At Chernobyl, which had no containment, a hydrogen explosion and a
fierce graphite fire caused a significant part of the radioactive core to be blown into the
atmosphere, where it contaminated large areas of the surrounding countryside and was
detected in smaller amounts literally around the world.
It isn't an argument, it is a statistic that enables us to calcuate at least an upper bound on the risks posed by nuclear power. Ie, you can assume a Chernobyl-style accident happens in the US tomorrow* and base your risk assessment on that. If you do that, you still end up with nuclear power being the right choice.Ivan Seeking said:The fact that we've never had a catastrophic event, is not an argument. The point is to avoid problems, not to wait until we have one.
Ready or not, they've lived with it just fine for the past 40 years!All of this equivocation only tells me that the public is not ready for nuclear power. We lack the social responsibility.
In a modern society, I suspect the opposite. http://pubs.acs.org/cen/_img/86/i46/8646gov2_view.jpg" , which was 35 years ago and perhaps overblown.russ_watters said:... And based on how low the actual physical risks really are, I tend to suspect the phsychological risks would work themselves out relatively quickly.
I'm not sure that's entirely accurate or representative:mheslep said:In a modern society, I suspect the opposite. http://pubs.acs.org/cen/_img/86/i46/8646gov2_view.jpg" , which was 35 years ago and perhaps overblown.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=5553393&page=4In the 1990s, the city "reclaimed" some of the boarded-up houses and declared the area outside the perimeter safe. But in order to obtain mortgages, buyers had to sign waivers that they would not later sue.
David Bower, who was one of the first to buy a home from the city (for $38,000), pays little attention to the fenced wasteland just one street away.
"I'll be honest," the 42-year-old detective told ABCNews.com outside his renovated ranch home. "This is the most tested part of the country. I know what's in the soil."
"It needs to go to rest," he said of the efforts of the outspoken Love Canal children. "I eat the vegetables in my garden and I'm not glowing in the dark."
http://www.cnn.com/US/9808/07/love.canal/[from 1998] However, the rest of Love Canal has been declared safe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. A public corporation took ownership of the abandoned properties, fixed up the homes and resold them.
Susan Bloss of the Love Canal Revitalization Agency said the agency has sold 232 of the 239 homes it renovated. Love Canal, which once symbolized hidden toxic wastelands, is now known as Black Creek Village.
The new residents of Black Creek Village feel safe in their new homes. "This area has been tested and tested and tested," said homeowner Trudy Christman. "This is the most tested piece of real estate in the United States."
russ_watters said:No, but neither can you. It isn't any more reasonable to assume they'd be devistating than it is to assume they wouldn't. And based on how low the actual physical risks really are, I tend to suspect the phsychological risks would work themselves out relatively quickly.
...ok...so what does "significant" mean and how does this help us to build an energy policy?Proton Soup said:i didn't say they would be devastating. but i tend to suspect that they would be significant.
russ_watters said:...ok...so what does "significant" mean and how does this help us to build an energy policy?
russ_watters said:...ok...so what does "significant" mean and how does this help us to build an energy policy?
TheStatutoryApe said:The effect in any major urban area would be pretty bad unless the military stepped in and contained the area very quickly. Most likely there would be massive numbers of people fleeing the area and the obligatory rioting. I do not think though that this would have any greater significance to energy policy than it already does.
As for security guards I do not think most people really get what the problem is. Certainly the issue with Wackenhut's nuclear plant security devision was much worse than it should ever get but the root causes are likely not just poor hiring practices. How many of you have ever had to stand and/or sit for 8, 10, or 12 hours watching for something that is likely never going to happen with little to no stimulus at all to keep you alert? How many of you have had a job that basically amounted to being a fall guy in case anything goes wrong?
Most employers, employees, and people in general treat security guards like **** and figure they are mostly lazy bums who couldn't hack it as real police officers. If you can figure out a reasonable way to reliably maintain a force of good workers in a braincell killing job where they are looked down upon, treated like crap (often even by their own employers), and usually not paid very well then please outline it for us. Until then please just realize that any employee usually only does as well as you would expect based on how they are treated.
TheStatutoryApe said:The effect in any major urban area would be pretty bad unless the military stepped in and contained the area very quickly. Most likely there would be massive numbers of people fleeing the area and the obligatory rioting. I do not think though that this would have any greater significance to energy policy than it already does.
drankin said:How did we get from Nuclear Plants to mall cop stereotypes?
Ivan Seeking said:All of these allusions to the past are moot. We now live in a world of terrorism - foreign and domestic. If a few knowledgeable people were to gain access to and control of a nuclear plant, and had the proper materials, could they cause a catastrophic failure and meltdown?
Yes.
It has already been shown that even in a time of crisis, we cannot depend on the private sector. The fact that we've never had a catastrophic event, is not an argument. The point is to avoid problems, not to wait until we have one.
All of this equivocation only tells me that the public is not ready for nuclear power. We lack the social responsibility.
Wrong. The commission was created a few weeks ago - http://www.energy.gov/news/8584.htmruss_watters said:This is why I don't trust Obama: He promised us he'd create a commission and they'd have an answer by now. And he hasn't done it yet.
Chu announced plans for the commission in the first couple of months of the administration. An announcement of its creation just now about that which has been already been studied ad infinitum seems to be moving a little slow.Gokul43201 said:Wrong. The commission was created a few weeks ago - http://www.energy.gov/news/8584.htm