The Glade 4.0

The plume, such as it is, will be washed into the ocean by the storms currently out there. I'm 80 miles inland well behind and beyond the coastal mountain range. I'm not at all worried.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

Yes, when you operate a nuclear power plant, you have to follow safety procedures. That isn't different from any other power plant. The nature of those safety procedures changes, but electricity isn't exactly the safest **** in the world. People tend to forget that because we've grown so accustomed to electricity that we take it for granted. If this were a hydro-electric plant, it would still be imperative that engineers get that damage under control, before something bad happened and wiped out an entire city, it just wouldn't be news, because entire generations were trained to be afraid of anything involving the word "nuclear."

A magnitude 9 earthquake striking the islands of Japan and causing tsunamis fits every reasonable definition of "worst-case scenario." Guess what? The reactor didn't melt down. Is everything fine? Well, no, one of the largest earthquakes in recorded history just hit the country. They got hit with a tremor that's a hunded times bigger than the one that **** up Haiti. Japan is anything but fine. They sure as hell aren't a reason to panic about nuclear power, though.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

My understanding is:

The plant was given a 10 year life extension over it's builders' recommendations (due up this year).

The plant survived the original strike fairly well, but the tsunami and after shocks weakened it to the point of damage.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Things are a little dicey. They're having some problems. They're also dealing with them. What we're seeing is a case of media sensationalism. "Japanese engineers haul *** to contain damage," doesn't sell newspapers anywhere nearly as well as, "Japanese nuclear crisis disaster explosion of the century!" I don't envy their plant engineers right now. They're busy as a mother ****, and power plants are dangerous places regardless of how they generate that energy. They're also doing what they're supposed to, rather than sitting on their asses because they don't want to go within 50 miles.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Just the unwillingness to accept that this disaster suggests something fundamental about the problems with nuclear power, which critics have pointed to for years. Or that we shouldn't be a bit alarmed at this.

I usually just shut up about stuff like this, and I realize there are vested interests here at work. But, really, don't crap on the public for their reaction. Just because this was a worst-case scenario doesn't mean that everything i fundamentally OK with nuclear power. There will always be unforeseen complications in worst-case scenarios, and people have a right to be concerned.

Funny thing is that I think I came to this thread originally last night to make a comment about dumbing down of TV news and NPR, but got off-track.

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This cold and dark tormented hell
Is all I`ll ever know
So when you get to heaven
May the devil be the judge

The problem with people having a right to be concerned, is they don't know what the **** they're talking about and have an irrational fear of the atom. A power plant overheating is a major problem. It doesn't matter if it's a nuclear power plant! If a hydroelectric power plant has a catastrophic failure, you're looking at torrent of water that devastates the surrounding area. If a coal-burning power plant has a catastrophic failure, you're looking at clouds of ash and dust that devastate the surrounding area. You aren't concerned about any of those possibilities, though. In fact, you probably have no idea that non-nuclear power plants can be so dangerous.

Can nuclear power plants be more dangerous if they fail? Yes, they can. They also provide more energy. The reason Japan uses that nuclear plant is because no other power plant would meet their energy requirements for that location. Nuclear power provides something tangible in exchange for that increased danger, and dealing with dangers and hazards is something that the power generation industry is familiar with. You have to wear full NATO body armor just to flip a circuit breaker inside of any power plant, nuclear or otherwise. These places aren't designed by Carl's Construction.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Oh, I have every idea that non-nuclear power plants and facilities can be dangerous. But a torrent of water or even clouds of dust that devastate the surrounding area do just that - harm the localized surroundings. Sorry, but you just can't say that a nuclear power plant's problems will stay localized. Or even if they do - Chernobyl's localized area is larger and will last longer than, say, a dam break, or even a coal-burning plant failure.

And, sorry, I don't accept the tradeoff that because they provide more energy, we can accept more risk. They're different and more far-reaching risks, and it's unfair to saddle coming generations with those risks.

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This cold and dark tormented hell
Is all I`ll ever know
So when you get to heaven
May the devil be the judge

There are two possible paths for energy in humanity's future: (1) Nuclear, and (2) returning to a preindustrial level of civilization that doesn't have the energy requirements we have now.

We either make (1) work, or be prepared for (2).

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
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