Goodbye 100w, 75w Incandescent Lamps

Environmentally speaking, there isn't much more the modern coal-fueled facility can do. I haven't seen any SMOKE coming from the stacks around here in decades.

Yah OK.

Pot - kettle - black ...

And I agree with you. It's unfortunate that groups of all types on all sides of most issues, not just this one, seem to feel it's necessary to take extreme positions or overstate their case to make a point. This just generally seems to contribute more noise, when we need more signal. (Don't get me started on the appalling lack of critical thinking we see on all fronts :-) )

It is indeed unfortunate that the US nuclear power industry has been stalled, for whatever reasons, for so long. If we do turn back in that direction, we will greatly miss the additional experience and history we would have gained with even a few new plants. Slow but steady rollout and testing of new designs, materials, operating procedures, maintenance, security, etc. would have provided not only invaluable real world data, but would have given the public more confidence in the industry and would have helped silence some of the most extreme rhetoric. Restarting the domestic nuclear program will require lots of talent with rather specialized skills, and we haven't been doing much to build the talent pool. If we're going to restart, let's do it soon so the industry can grow slowly and cautiously.

Paul F.

I respectfully disagree.

The environmental movement did MUCH to vilify nuclear power generation with no basis in fact or experience. TMI's little "belch" of irradiated steam, magnified a million times by a mass media with a well documented anti-nuke bias and Hanoi Jane's little movie did the rest.

Any group with a baseless counter agenda should NOT be part of a system of checks and balances.

Agree completely.

Won't work in this thread though. Here everything is either good or evil.

Not at all. Call them what you like, they are still extremists with an anti-nuke agenda. As such, they should be mostly, if not completely, discounted.

For tripping over such semantics, your doctor is an idiot.

I can just see the kindly, old, bespectacled M.D. enter his PATIENT'S room during grand rounds and ask, "How is my CUSTOMER doing this morning?" Gag me.

As usual, you're wrong again. (Habit-forming, isn't it?)

It is those the M.D. SAVES and cures that place him/her on a pedestal. Admittedly, some physicians LIKE it "up there" and make no effort to come down, but few self-ascend to such a status.

Then there's you: Not an M.D. yet you have ascended to a pedestal of your own making. It must be quite a balancing act to stay up there considering the stack of chips on each shoulder.

Why ask something to which I already know the answer?

Of course, you won't like it but, here it is: They are informed and rational. The subset to which you refer is not.

Now wasn't that simple? No wonder it eluded you.

It would have attracted even more DIM BULBS than this one.

I'll bet you're not.

Ridership has NOTHING to do (anymore) with buying new busses. Additional fleecing of the non-riding taxpayer has EVERYTHING to do with it.

You're welcome.

Geez, you guys. Get over it.

Wearing CLEAN clothing, the average CLEAN body can sweat profusely and generate little odor.

Aren't you glad you use Dial? Don't you wish everyone did?

In any discourse, there will always be outliers. Groups with extreme views driven by ignorance, hidden (or not) agendas, or other motivations.

In science and engineering, outliers in data receive special scrutiny. When such scrutiny reveals valid reasons for excluding them from further consideration, they are set aside. Not removed from the record, but set aside for valid reasons.

We need to do the same in public discourse and policy. Critically examine the points and counter points and set aside the ones that are truly outliers and invalid. This requires a great deal of leadership, critical thinking, and impartiality.

You don't have to convince me that those skills are way too rare in our chosen leaders. We need leaders who can identify and set aside the outliers, and then make an informed decision on the basis of what remains.

So I agree with you. If a group's position, under the cold light of critical thinking, is determined to be an outlier, then it should be excluded from the remainder of the decision making process.

But a point I am would like to make is this. One can't exclude a post ion just because it appears to be outside the mainstream. (I don't mean to imply that's what your doing, but there's a lot of it going on out there) One must do the study, do the analysis, apply critical thinking, and make the informed decision.

Now what I didn't take care to do in my previous post was to make it clear that I believe environmental groups and other opponents of nuclear power should not be lumped all together and painted with a broad brush. Some are outliers, others can add value to the discussion. I believe this is true with the other side(s) as well.

Paul F.

Miller, a long time ago, you put the bottle to your head and pulled the trigger.

No. 54% of the country questions nothing at all. For the remaining 46%, further discussion is in order.

On Thu 27 Dec 2007 07:52:52p, Jim Yanik told us...

The company I work for has an exercise room that also has an adjacent shower.

Go ahead, blame the car.

What about the 2nd Amendment?

No, wait. Nevermind.

You forgot your meds again, Kanter -- you're making even less sense than usual today.

...

As simply some background information, while there was a massive release of fission products from Chernobyl, it was _not_ a "nuclear accident" in that there was not a nuclear explosion as in a weapon. The reactor over-heated owing to mis-operation following a turbine overspeed trip test which was conducted in violation of several safety procedures in that all proscribed systems were not operational at the time. Anyway, it was the fire that was the real culprit combined with the atrocious design feature of having no reactor containment building as do all LWRs worldwide. Being a graphite-moderated pile reactor design, when the temperature reached a critical point, the graphite ignited and that fire was the main feature of the accident. At its peak, it was hot enough that it disassociated the H and O in water sprayed on it in attempts to contain it.

This type of accident is not physically realizable in a LWR, either P- or B- type. As they are water-moderated. TMI was a core-melt accidental LOCA (not the double-guillotine design type, but manually induced by operator error(s) following the initial reactor trip and stuck-open PORV). In that event, owing to the design features and the containment, while there was significant fuel melt, containment was not breached and once the fresh shift came on duty and recognized what the previous shift had done wrong and restarted the primary RCPs and HPI to re-cover the core w/ primary coolant and establish primary coolant circulation, the incident was under control.

As noted earlier, if the operating shift had recognized they had an incident that had been specifically addressed in (then) recent bulletins to all utilities of the specific reactor design, they would undoubtedly have not been fooled as they were and taken proper action initially and the whole thing would have been simply a relatively short outage to repair the PORV and implement the upgrades/operational guidances. The upshot is, however, that while expensive, it essentially was a test of the design and systems intended to deal with a LOCA that was as if a full-scale test reactor had been sacrificed to prove the systems adequate to the task.

--

I was wondering when the psychotic trolls would chime in.

I am well informed supporter of nuclear power. Your immediately preceeding sentence tells me you are a cheerleader witout srious knowledge f the facilities.

Even with pebble bed technology, commercial power reactor construction is not somethingone does "quickly". You can have two of the following with rregad to any major engineering project: on time, on budget, or works, You choose.

And we'll wait while you Google pebble bed tehnology.

Plant siting is not solely effected by NIMBYs or BANANAs (Again, we'll wait while you Google BANANA.)

There are always serious seismic issues for any power plant, including windills, nukes, and tide generators. Ignore them at you peril

Nukes pollute as much as, but differently from, fossil fueled generators. The thermal pollution from nukes is far greater than with a similar mega wattage fossil plant. Particulate and gas emmissions with nukes are far lower.

"Spent" nuclear fuel has its own unique issues. The primary two, diversion and longeity, can both be dealyt with with acceptable risks.

Who is going to operate your nukes? Please don't say the IOPCs and their staffs (Again we'll wait while you Google IOPCs.)

Where is the capital to come from for building your nukes?

"...all..." You live in a fantasy world as extreme and as unconnected from reality as the Luddite anti nukers.

Screw ANWR, drill seriously in the Gulf of Texas and off the Northern California / Oregon / Washington coast. The reserves are there and the return is a lot quicker than ANWR.

What does rhat mean in English?