OT: Rolls Royce on track to deliver SMR

the one nuclear reactor he SHOULD be scared of, as it is a radiation emitting cancer causing killer

Thanks. He skips over the prompt critical bit, but maybe that is because we aren't to sure about it.

I had a look at:

instead. A good explanation I thought.

Sheep in Wales, how far away was that from the source of the 'non problem'?

If a blade falls off a wind turbine or a transformer blows up life isn't still being threatened around the world 30 years later.

The only people in complete denial of the completely different magnitude of order of risk in Nukes are the trolls and left brainers (who dgaf about anyone else).

And yes, 'of course' the 'cost' to all of us means everything has to be considered, from the environmental impact in obtaining the materials to make these generation sources, to the pollution they create during their life spans to the pollution created during their decommissioning ... including long it might be before that land could be used for something else, like housing.

I'm still not saying I'm against nukes, just that as an energy solution they are potentially like lighting a BBQ with petrol. If you are very careful / lucky, you might get away with it ...

Cheers, T i m

That's true of most things. Wind turbines, for example, being built out of exotic composites. But how much damage has this pollution done?

ditto.

Andy

A certain amount of radioactive material has been spread, and that only by one reactor. If it has a short half life, then it's already gone, years ago, decayed to safer stuff. If it has a long half life, it's not that dangerous anyway. Potassium-40, for example, causes 4300 radioactive decays in your body every second.

You overlook that there is significant radioactive material all around us, even more so in places like Dartmoor. You also overlook that life has been dealing with radiation since the beginning of life on Earth, and has developed mechanisms to mitigate the effects of it.

square root of sweet fanny adams. Chronic Low level radiation just is not an issue for cells.

The only tow radioisotopes that seem to be harmful in the broader context are radon that decays to lead in the lungs, and highly radioactive iodine 131 that gives people thyroid cancer if they are within range of a reactor release .

Everything else injurious is confined to the reactor site

There are 4 billion tonnes of radioactive uranium in the sea. Even more in the earths crust

Radio carbon and potassium are everywhere. At my school we had a Geiger counter, The physics master switched it on. 'why is it clicking?' 'There is natural radiation everywhere'. We played with it for a bit. Some people seemed to be slightly more radioactive than others.,

Then the physics master unlocked a box and carefully lifted out two lead pots put them on the bench and told us to gather round. He used tongs to lift out one silvery disk and put it on the bench. The Geiger counter perked up a bit. He took another silvery disk out of the other pot, the Geiger counter got a bit more interested. He slowly and very carefully slid one disk towards the other, stopping about 1/8" apart. The Geiger counter went mad.

"I think that will do" he said. "That was a chain reaction, and those disks were uranium , somewhat enriched with U235"

"What would have happened if they had touched sir?" "We would all have been in the Royal Free" he said "And I would have been sacked".

They don't do physics like that any more.

Its a shame no one makes cheap Geiger counters on smart phones. Once people realised how radioactive the world is compared to a nuclear power station, they would clamour for nuclear power. I guess that's why no one has put one in a phone. Project Fear needs its bogeymen to keep you believing in windmills....

Let's not forget the pollution from spewed out from the mining, refining, processing, etc of the rare-earth elements needed by all kinds of generators, batteries, and control systems.

But that pollution is in far-off China and elsewhere, so the virtue-signalling loonygreenies, vegans, and assorted Post-Truth Marxists can pretend it doesn't exist. Nothing must get in the way of the toxic green revolution!

Interesting. But I'm surprised he had access to even slightly enriched uranium, although back in the day I suppose such things may have been available through lab chemical stockists for just such demonstrations. Townson and Mercer is a name that comes to mind. I know that depleted uranium was fairly easily come by, but not enriched.

I have a small Geiger counter - one of these

I might only need 'one'.

I believe they were (are) testing welsh lamb for 30 years after Chernobyl and still often rejecting those grazing on the higher levels for being over the acceptable levels for radioactivity. How much further away and how much longer lasting does it have to be before you might start to consider the risk being greater than alternatives that do spread the consequences anything like as far and as so long?

And we *are* phasing out many other polluting energy generation forms for that exact reason.

Interesting (?)

I do(?) ... and you know that how?

And how many people live on Dartmoor?

Again, I have have I?

Until the levels are greater than those typical 'background' levels and then we die or are made very ill by it?

Why do we sign a disclaimer when having any 'radioactive' form of medical process and have to read the section about 'increased risk' (when having a medical procedure that is trying to make us *better*)?

Oh, and I know about the risk assessment of those two scenarios, before you think your Goblin brain is superior to mine again. ;-)

For the hard of thinking ... (so yes, that's you), I haven't said I don't want nukes, all I have said is when / if they go wrong they can make a big mess that can quickly span the world and last a long long time. So it doesn't matter how good ours are when we *can* still be impacted by one 'going wrong' (for whatever reason) 2000 miles away.

Cheers, T i m

Oh yes, I'm sure all those voting for Brexit would also swallow the 'Don't live in the environment, live in a nuclear power station instead' line in the same way that they would buy a car that has good ail filtration making the air outside cleaner than the air inside .... fine while they are inside and not breathing the exhaust on the outside.

No, it's because few would care / be interested.

I'm not sure there are any windmills in the Ukraine tall enough to fall over and pollute the ground in Wales (for 30+ years).

Maybe if it had made your property uninhabitable for 30+ years you might have a different opinion on it (when you have come up from your basement and realised that is).

Cheers, T i m

Shame they don't keep their air / sea water to themselves eh? ;-(

It did in the eyes of anyone taking the phrase to mean the overall scenario, even if it didn't scientifically or ballistically.

Many many people say 'My car has blown up' and they don't live in Beirut or Afghanistan.

The nuke was working, it blew up, then wasn't working.

'It bowing up' has the potential for a vastly different outcome from the generator on a wind turbine 'blowing up' or the inverter on a solar farm 'blowing up', or even a coal fired power station 'blowing up'.

Cheers, T i m

Dangerous.

And one reason why it might not be dangerous.

So even looking straight at the sun is dangerous and that's

But that doesn't mean I'm scared of the sun, it means I take precautions re the impact of the sun on me, including keeping out of it.

A good few thousand square miles of Wales and the surrounding areas of England / Scotland weren't able to move away from the radiation fallout from something that went wrong 2000 miles away.

Am I 'scared' of Chernobyl? Not particularly, but am I right to question the use of such technologies to produce power rather than to invest in more research and effort re the development of alternatives, of course, just as I am keen we look to animal-free sources of food over the continuation of the pain and suffering some continue to cause to innocent creatures when there are already alternatives that remove that.

Cheers, T i m

It might be in your planetary system - would that be Vega?

The graph of harm due to radiation against levels of radiation was produced from data gathered from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That gave a pretty straight line and because it did not have any data down to zero, it was simply extended there. Ever since, it has been used to determine what levels are harmful and to set industry limits.

More recent research (in the last 5 years) has shown that the risks are not linear, due to the organisms having developed to cope with low levels and it is now thought that the existing industrial limits may be up to a 1000x tighter than they need to be.

The industry (and by extension the public paying for it) are therefore paying massively over the odds to reduce radiation to unnecessarily low levels, people are far more worried about radiation than they need to be and existing contamination is being considered harmful and causing monitoring and restrictions when they are likely totally unnecessary.

We're straying into the "fact" that your chopping board has more germs than your toilet seat territory.

Or trying to get more than 50% of the population to be more than average <whatever> ...

Obviously not sheep that are grazing on Dartmoor, then.

It's not just Dartmoor. Most of Devon and Cornwall too, and anywhere where the exposed rock is granite.

Your casual aquaintance with facts (such as how far away the Sun is from the Earth), make is a reasonable assumption.

That's right, the moment it goes over the limit we all fall down and die.

This is your no-brainer approach showing again.

So you can't sue them when they x-ray you today to find what is causing that painful toothache, and then you get cancer is 20 years time. Do they quantify "increased risk"? Do you even understand what the word "risk" means?

I always said T i m lived on a different planet to thinking earthmen.

Perhaps life on Vega has evolved where only the right side of the brain functions, so it is devoid of logical, rational thought the average earthman gets to enjoy.