None of this has anything to do with commercial nuclear power as understood in the West, however. The Chernobyl type stations are being phased out as unsafe and quite right too - they have no containment building and are graphite moderated.
Further, which kit broke down? There was a Horizon (IIRC) a few years ago showing extensive footage taken by robot TV cameras inside and underneath the sarcophagus at Chernobyl.
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember David Hansen saying something like:
It's a delight to bimble along some N.of Scotland back roads and find a small hydro installation. Most of the ones I've found look as though they date back to the 30s, 40s or 50s. I suppose many of them were put in for local estate and village use, either privately or part of the NoSHB rural electrification project.
Damn. I didn't see that.
Did kit break down? I thought it was the result of experimenting with the reactor. I bow to your obvious superior knowledge of the risks inherent in western reactors. They do have accidents of course, but commendably few. Some are questioning our safety limits on radiation as well, saying they are too low. This was discussed in an earlier thread. In that one I mentioned the 'black box' mini reactors that are now available where reliable but limited energy is needed.
Peter Scott
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember The Natural Philosopher saying something like:
Fuck off to Hawick, there's a place for you.
I was referring to Mr Hansen's remarks about western kit breaking down at Chernobyl - I assume he was talking about kit sent there to help with the aftermath.
Re the reactors at Chernobyl, I should have said that they are graphite moderated *and* water cooled. This is apparently the dangerous combination.
There have been three major reactor incidents in all the time of nuclear power.
Windscale, which was pure madness, and is totally unrepresentative, three mile island, which killed no one, and released no significant amount of radioactivity although it damaged the reactor beyond repair, and chernobyl, which was bad design, worse maintenance and opaertional madness.
And killed directly 70 people.
Including all that lot, the death rate from the nuclear industry is the lowest of ANY power generation industry per unit generated, Including windpower.
The anomalous situation that exists with regard to waste, where e.g. coal flyash is allowed to be made into bricks, but io it had originated from the nuclear industry it would be considered too hazardous for such use, and would need to be buried for a thousand years, is 'interesting' to say the least.
Its not that dengerous if operated within design limits.
It wasn't. Also, there was no secondary containment vessel (mandatory in the West).
THEY DO NOT WORK. Period. They save no carbon whatsoever, overall. What is the point of having them at all?
plus the odd Russian military cockup:
I have never quite understood the non proliferation argument against
*us* having breader reactors anyway... we already have weapons (and for that matter, dedicated military reactors for making more should we want)
Good point. Russians, teh doyens of socialism, never were very hot on Elfin safety..
Its more about when them towel heads rush in, declare a reactor a mosque, and a holy site, and ship the stuff back to the Taliban. While human rights lawyers argue over their right to do it. Allegedly.
I.e. less weapons grade material is better.
But none of the nuclear policy makes sense, any more than the renewables obligation or feed in tariffs makes sense.
Its all about meeting the perceptions of the electorate, not about actually telling the truth and working out the best policy.
Its what happens when stupid think elects stupid talk and you get stupid government. Hamstrung by stupid electoral opinion, they just stick their noses in the troughs, spend ever ever-increasing budgets on buying more votes..and the rest, as they say, is history.
Bureaucracy is like a cancer on the state.
On Fri, 22 Oct 2010 13:17:40 +0100 someone who may be Tim Streater wrote this:-
Not sure why you felt the need to quote the whole of my posting. I seldom read postings where someone has quoted more than a screenful. People who don't trim often don't have anything useful to say.
According to a television programme a few years after the event, all the western robots sent in to clean up, as I typed. I have it on video tape somewhere. Robots have got better since then, though moving a camera around is a little easier than cutting and moving.
I imagine the failure of the robots at Chernobyl acted as a spur to do better. They are being used to clean up the nuclear mess in places.
Robots isn't quite the right word, remotely controlled machines is the more accurate but unwieldy term.
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