Just remember everybody: nuclear power is super safe! Luck is a fucking super-duper strategy for not having nuclear accidents.
Construction was well under way when Sir John, the director of the Atomic
Energy Research Establishment, insisted the filters be installed.
"He saw that if there was a fire, which was probable, there would be no way
of stopping radioactive dust escaping into the atmosphere," his son said.
Because they were last-minute additions, the filters were placed atop the
two 360ft (110m) tall chimneys rather than at the base.
[...]
They were roundly criticised by the engineers building the nuclear facility.
Engineers, who had been told by the government to make the UK a nuclear
power by 1952, nicknamed the filters Cockcroft's Follies, mocking them as an
expensive piece of pointless delay.
However, as one of Sir John's physicists Terence Price said after the fire,
"the word folly did not seem appropriate after the accident".
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cumbria-29803990
Nuclear power has nothing to do with that incident.
Windscale (Sellafield) facility was a military plant, it's raison d'etre was Plutonium production for UK nuclear weapons.
Also, the Windscale accident was in 1957. That was extremely early in terms of nuclear anything (power or otherwise); the risks simply weren't all known yet!
I don't think that comparing first-generation, experimental nuclear plants with potentially passively-safe, Gen IV nuclear reactors is useful at all. This would be a lot like complaining about the crash survivability of the Model T – i.e. not relevant.
There's a genuine question about whether or not we can produce safe nuclear plants, but the problems are political, economic and social - not technical.
Your tone isn't really helpful – like I pointed out, there's a question about whether or not we can build safe nuclear reactors, given the external influences on that process (desire to minimise cost, for example.)
Anyway, we'll certainly never get to safe nuclear reactors if we just stop working on it…
oh noes my tone -- whinging about tone is the last resort of people who have nothing to say, but dislike being wrong. Safe nuclear reactor designs demonstrated so far: zero.
Your claim, condensed: assume a safe nuclear reactor design. Therefore, we can design safe nuclear reactors!
This is dumb enough that I'm not sure what response you're looking for.
having good engineers who are not afraid to push for the right solution as well as the environment where such push is possible is the "super-duper strategy". Compare that to the Feynman report on Challenger.
Just remember everybody: nuclear power is super safe!
we don't have an alternative (solar and wind aren't alternatives, just stop-gap measures to buy us some time). Technological civilization goes only one direction. Once Cro-Magnon discovered bow+arrow, he killed off Neanderthals and mammoths. Once Cro-Magnon discovered fission ... The only question here is whether we discover the way to harness aneutronic fusion in time before the fission (incl. safe at first look ones like thorium based) and neutronic fusion result in the amount of nuclear waste and disasters seriously affecting the existence of the civilization itself. If only instead of anti-nuclear "fear spreading" propaganda there were pro-fusion research investment "educational" propaganda ...
yeah, the engineers didn't push for the right solution. That would have been apparent had, say, you read the quote. That I put in the comment. So you didn't even have to read the article.
as for your fear-spreading propaganda, in the real world, we've had a series of nuclear accidents that mostly haven't been much worse because of luck. Idiots think luck is a viable safety strategy. The rest of us -- post 3 mile island, post japan -- think the safety record is, charitably, checkered.
Comments
Just remember everybody: nuclear power is super safe! Luck is a fucking super-duper strategy for not having nuclear accidents.
Nuclear power has nothing to do with that incident. Windscale (Sellafield) facility was a military plant, it's raison d'etre was Plutonium production for UK nuclear weapons.
Also, the Windscale accident was in 1957. That was extremely early in terms of nuclear anything (power or otherwise); the risks simply weren't all known yet!
I don't think that comparing first-generation, experimental nuclear plants with potentially passively-safe, Gen IV nuclear reactors is useful at all. This would be a lot like complaining about the crash survivability of the Model T – i.e. not relevant.
There's a genuine question about whether or not we can produce safe nuclear plants, but the problems are political, economic and social - not technical.
Oh right, how many gen 4 reactors are built? According to wiki, none.
Ooh, I figured out why they're safe!
Your tone isn't really helpful – like I pointed out, there's a question about whether or not we can build safe nuclear reactors, given the external influences on that process (desire to minimise cost, for example.)
Anyway, we'll certainly never get to safe nuclear reactors if we just stop working on it…
oh noes my tone -- whinging about tone is the last resort of people who have nothing to say, but dislike being wrong. Safe nuclear reactor designs demonstrated so far: zero.
Your claim, condensed: assume a safe nuclear reactor design. Therefore, we can design safe nuclear reactors!
This is dumb enough that I'm not sure what response you're looking for.
having good engineers who are not afraid to push for the right solution as well as the environment where such push is possible is the "super-duper strategy". Compare that to the Feynman report on Challenger.
we don't have an alternative (solar and wind aren't alternatives, just stop-gap measures to buy us some time). Technological civilization goes only one direction. Once Cro-Magnon discovered bow+arrow, he killed off Neanderthals and mammoths. Once Cro-Magnon discovered fission ... The only question here is whether we discover the way to harness aneutronic fusion in time before the fission (incl. safe at first look ones like thorium based) and neutronic fusion result in the amount of nuclear waste and disasters seriously affecting the existence of the civilization itself. If only instead of anti-nuclear "fear spreading" propaganda there were pro-fusion research investment "educational" propaganda ...
yeah, the engineers didn't push for the right solution. That would have been apparent had, say, you read the quote. That I put in the comment. So you didn't even have to read the article.
as for your fear-spreading propaganda, in the real world, we've had a series of nuclear accidents that mostly haven't been much worse because of luck. Idiots think luck is a viable safety strategy. The rest of us -- post 3 mile island, post japan -- think the safety record is, charitably, checkered.