OT-Very OT-Geen Fruitcakes in action

and take out a Blue State area.

Gotta look on the bright side.

Strider

Reply to
Strider
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But where would you get the mason jars and preservatives for your pickled 'possum then, Strider? What would you do when the only TV was re-runs of Laurence Welk and Kate Smith singing "When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain"?

Be careful what you wish for. d8-)

-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

On 4 May 2005 17:52:12 GMT, the inscrutable snipped-for-privacy@w-sherwood.ih.lucent.com (Chuck Sherwood) spake:

So far, U.S. Nuclear Power Plants have nearly a million safe hours behind them (commercial output since 1957) with less loss of life than people's front steps. Globally, there are 441 plants in 31 countries with 25 more planned in 8 countries. Total operating years worldwide is 8,576. U.S. total is 2,208, yet GLOBALLY, we've heard of only two accidents. Both figures are as of July 1998.

Yes, an accident may be bad when it happens, but it hasn't yet. WHY WORRY?

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Reply to
Larry Jaques

Hum...I believe that the "classic" jet pack (used by James Bond) was indeed a short-flight, hydrogen peroxide powered thing. However, I recall seeing a thing or two about a small, turbojet running on Kerosene that whould have quite a bit longer flight times. I can see some issues there, though, of course, ranging from the fact that a person would have a very loud motor strapped to their back, to the fact that if it DOES have problems, the blades are all lined up perfectly to cut the flyer in half, to the fact that it is a LONG way to the ground. however, it did seem like a pretty cool toy. Regards Dave Mundt

Reply to
Dave Mundt

A toy that gave me some of the wildest memories of my teenage years. I lived a few miles from Princeton's James Forestal Research Center, where (in the '60s) they had a whole department doing GEM work, and I had a connection to get in and watch. They had several kinds of jet packs, jet-engined VTOL platforms, and other crazy things. It was the most bizarre stuff to watch that I've ever seen.

-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

Anything can happen. TMI was deemed safe but three concurrent mistakes allowed it to happen. One was a know defect that should have been corrected but for some reason was not fixed.

The space shuttle challenger should not have crashed. There were amply warning signs but the idiots in charge chose to ignore them and not fix the problem.

Chernobly would not have happened either if the operators were not told to do something stupid and in the process disabled most of the safetly mechanisms on the reactor.

The wreck of the Exxon Valdeese should not have happened. We knew that single hull tankers would cause exactly what happened. In this case we allowed a single point of failure to case an accident.

I believe the USA lost a couple nuke subs too.

The bottom line is that as long as humans are involved, sooner or later somebody will do something stupid and cause an accident no matter how safe the design. How many examples of human stupidity do you need? Shall I quote Murphy here?

I would rather clean up an oil spill than clean up a nuclear accident. Chernobly may not be habital for 500 years. Thousands of square miles of land unuseable for generations. A pretty high price to pay.

Time to close this thread and move on to metal working!

Reply to
Chuck Sherwood

Do not forget that TMI was a "big deal" (tm). They really didn't know if the H2 bubble would dissolve back in. They had no clue for the first few hours what was even going wrong, EVEN THOUGH THE EXACT SAME THING HAD HAPPENED ONCE BEFORE. This was not the first time the relief valve had stuck on one of those reactors, the only reason it didn't go bad the first time was that the operator was good and immediately figured it out, and closed the secondary valve.

The entire chain hardly inspires confidence.

Yes, not the same as chernobyl. But it could have been much, much worse than it was.

And the facts he presents are indeed mostly correct, up to the 'same as' part.

Jim

Reply to
jim rozen

And yet not ONE case you've cited "killed the entire world with one accident." In fact, I'll wager every penny I possess that you can't name any example of human engineering that could "kill the entire world with one accident." That's because no such thing exists. Even if we were to build a thousand new nuclear reactors, not one of them could ever "kill the entire world with one accident." Even a whole bunch of them failing simultaneously (statistically impossible) could not "kill the entire world with one accident."

Don't let the sky hit you on the head, Mr. Chicken Little.

Reply to
DeepDiver
*snip*

Unlimited nuclear war, brought on by paranoia and insanity (see the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the attitudes of many patches of humanity, even today). If you are like me, though, you probably have about $10 in pennies laying around. So...let's just say I won, and you can keep the change (*smile*). Regards Dave Mundt

Reply to
Dave Mundt

Dang, I've heard of sinus headaches, but nothing like fusion in the head. Hope it gets better soon. Maybe you could go fission and forget about it?

Reply to
Dave Hinz

While I admire your approach, I am compelled to point out that even in the blue "states", it's the urban areas which are blue, while it's rural areas which get the nuke plants. So, all it would do is make a blue state less red.

Good thought, though.

Dave Hinz

Reply to
Dave Hinz

No, Chuck, anything can _not_ happen. TMI or any other USA'n reactor can NOT fail in the same way as Chernobyl, because it's an entirely different type of nuclear reactor. This is like you claiming that "that rock could catch fire, because I once saw a piece of coal burn and it's rock". Coal is not granite. Granite will not catch fire, coal will.

And yet, even with the massive clusterfuck of operations that day, the release was minimal, and the containment building is _containing_ the hazard. As it was designed to do.

Let's focus on your misunderstanding of nuke plants first, then we can get into rocket science.

AND, if the Russians hadn't been using an inherently dangerous design that the US does not use.

You claim the Exxon Valdez was a single-point-of-failure accident?

Yes, and?

No, you've postulated that TMI has the same hazard as Chernobyl, because they're both nuke plants. I think you've exhibited enough supidity already. You don't understand the difference on a technical or engineering level. That's _fine_, really it is. But when you base your fears on a willing ignorance of reality, then expect to have your fears and opinions disrespected and disregarded.

Funny, I'd rather have a dozen TMI's than one Exxon Valdez.

WE DON'T USE ANYTHING VAGUELY LIKE THAT KIND OF REACTOR, CHUCK.

Fine, but be prepared to have your bullshit on nuke plants called when you make more dramatically wrong statements about it.

Reply to
Dave Hinz

So, you agree with him that a single accident could destroy the world, or do you feel that he's being alarmist there?

Reply to
Dave Hinz

gene engineered ebola escaping into a major city with international airports could do it.

Reply to
Charles Spitzer

I said "up to" not "up to and including."

But he is presenting a viewpoint that nicely balances the "don't worry about a thing, everything's under control" that the Entergy folks distribute.

Allow me to put this in perspective.

Entergy has an alarm system and public evacuation plan for the region surrounding the indian point nuclear plants. Bus stops, maps, etc about what they will do if the area needs to be evacuated.

Recently a single bridge in the area (tappan zee bridge) was closed to all traffic because some poor unfortunate person was trying to jump off it.

The entire westchester and rockland county areas became instantly and totally gridlocked.

It's apparent that the evac plans are worse than useless because they're diverting resources that could be othewise used elsehwere. There is no hope that any of their plans could actually work in practice.

Jim

Reply to
jim rozen

Actually most of us survivalism guys are into off grid energy and such, however a lot of us want our nation to survive. And that means less reliance on offshore energy and more reliance on domestic energy and that means nuclear power.

I want to be able to tell the entire ME to shove their oil up their ass.

We could do a lot. We could get the car makers to build more diesel powered vehicals (think bio-diesel, WVO, etc.... )

Bring back localized hydro-electric production (there used to be lots of little dams that produced power, most are no longer used, this should be reversed).

Promote localized energy production period, we need to stop relying on big mega corperations for our energy needs.

Do away with the 'national' grid, energy production should be localized.

Give big tax breaks and credits for those who go "Off grid" Be it solar, compact windmills, etc....

Promote off grid home energy systems. Try to get more folks to just make their own for their homes, it's not impossible and if more R&D were avalible, then the systems would become more affordable and more reliable.

Promote more alcohol conversions for gasoline powered vehicals, IOWs lets grow our fuel instead of drill for it.

My point is that we can be doing lots of things to curb our addition to offshore energy. We are simply not taking big enough steps to achive this goal.

n.

Reply to
North

Finally! A survivalist I agree with! Yes, there are many "pie in the sky" notions about energy usage/production that will result in throwing money down the toilet but the current lack of energy policy/business as usual does the same thing. Simply sucking more local oil still doesn't address the long term problem as the problem is at the point of use, not production.

True freedon/security will come from localizing rather than globalizing. One of the main points of design of the internet is the notion of a distributed system so that descruction of part cannot destroy the whole. Although it probably isn't reality with regards to the internet, localized production of food, consumer goods, energy, etc would make the country a whole lot stronger in the long run.

A theory of economics that is becomming more excepted is that continuing to subsidize a product as we do (timber contracts given at below cost, oil/mineral rights at below administratin costs) supresses growth of competing and alternate technologies. The result is that instead of a slow change to something better, the system blows up when either the resources begin to dwindle or the back-handed subsidies can no longer be met. We've gotta stop shooting ourselves in the foot via public covering of costs to companies. These costs include tax breaks, marketing subsidies, farm subsidies, discounted administrative costs, "make work" military contracts, etc.

I rambled again...yea, I know it's more complex than this.

Koz

Reply to
Koz

Unfortunately our present economic system encourages the exact opposite: centralization of food and consumer good production in a few mega-corporations.

At this point corporations have *so* much political power they can control whoever gets elected. The elected officials are then strongly beholden and see that the laws, regulations, and tax codes favor even more centralization.

Jim

Reply to
jim rozen

Gotcha. Didn't have his wording in front of me, thanks for clarifying.

Are you saying that a jumper would stop people from evacuating the city? I think he'd get run over almost immediately.

Well, hard to say. But the point stands that the safety precautions are many layers deep, and even the massive clusterfuck at TMI showed that they're effective, even in an old design.

Reply to
Dave Hinz

Perfection is an unattainable goal....

Strider

Reply to
Strider

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