OT: Rolls Royce on track to deliver SMR

No, this was considered a very important test to establish a different aspect of safety. They were so focussed on this that they turned off their brains.

For the last couple of decades virtually all the focus for new designs has been on passive safety.

I can't think of a significant engineering failure in the past 50 years where no-one said "With hindsight, we knew that could happen".

You have probably got to go back to the Comet 1 failures in the 50's, with fatigue initiated by fretting at rivets, and stress concentration factors at window corners. The Liberty ship failures in WW2 led to the science of fracture mechanics.

Even the Russians knew the RBMKs were an accident waiting to happen. In Japan the question 'what if a tsunami hits' had been answered by ' the seven meter wall will keep it out' , and if someone had said 'what if it doesn't?' the answer would correctly have been - 'the loss of four reactors with secondary containment will be the least of our worries compared to the devastation and loss of life such a tsunami would wreak'.

Its a bit like saying our reactors need to be safe from nuclear attack. Why? A few more mSv of radiation when shitloads has been dropped in bomb form...

The point about safety in a quality controlled environement is that every incident that us not in accordance with regulations is noted, and its implications are considered. The procedures or parts are modified and tested.

Rolls Royce is the best possible company to be doing this - they have a track record in small PWRs from submarines. They have a track record in power generations from OCGT and CCGT adaptations of aero engines,. They also have the total quality approach in place for the jet engine program. And they have manufacturing capable of high quality mass production.

Bullshit.

That?s not cancel culture.

Indeed it would be, it should have gone to the calves it was meant for (especially today with so many alternatives that don't involve animal suffering and exploitation).

Cheers, T i m

In Australia - right. In northern Europe wrong.

I once saw, in the cinema, a documentary on Australian salt . Would people use it if they knew it was collected using bulldozers and other such mechanical beasts.

Why ever not? Have you not seen how potatoes beans and cereals are harvested?

The Western systems simply would not allow the RBMK reactor and its inherent problems.

The design meant that in an emergency, rods could not be inserted rapidly and that for the first part of their insertion, power output would rise. Clearly a dangerous combination.

It was known and they decided to ignore it.

Possibly not known to the operators?

Fatigue was known about before the Comet. Neville Shute based one of his books on it "No Highway", published in 1948.

I didn't know about those failures - I did know that they were a British design and that the later Americanised design use of oil firing meant problems dealing with ice on the Artic convoys, because they no longer had hot ashes to spread to help give a solid footing and clear some of the ice.

most of those are cooked before eating. Salt is often added "raw"

The problem with the breaking of Liberty ships was all welded construction and the wrong type of steel which went brittle when cold. In my degree course about 60 years ago.

The point is that it was known to the Soviet Authorities and they decided to ignore it and go ahead anyway.

So let me be clear about this line of reasoning. Salt which doesn't support organic life, is at rusk of contamination by machinery that also cannot support organic life. But vegetables that can get crapped on by a fox etc are ok because they are sometimes cooked?

Have you ever spent more than 30 seconds inspecting a farm or market garden?

At the moment SMRs are being talked about all over the place. When it shakes down to two or three serious lines RR should be up there with the best. And I guess we might see some interesting licensing deals.

AIUI Chernobyl was supposed to run the test in the early evening, using the day shift that had been trained and briefed for the task.

An unexpected demand for power meant that the controller in Kiev, who knew of the test, rang Chernobyl to ask them to keep the reactor online until demand had dropped. By the time this happened and the controller had released the reactor, the trained day shift had handed over to the night shift. These people knew of the test and I believe had the protocols to hand. Someone decided the test should go ahead. However, there should have been a reactor expert on hand in the control room, but for whatever reason he wasn't there, so vital clues were not picked up by the operators.

So the chain of errors that led to the reactor running away was quite long, and if any single one had not happened, we'd never had heard of the place.

Have you ever calculated - always presuming you have enough fingers to count on - the 'damage radius' of the cement factories that make the ingredients for the 2,500-ton concrete plinth for each wind turbine?

Or the 'damage radius' of the rare-earth elements' mining, refining, and component manufacture needed by its design?

Or the 'damage radius' for the lithium mining, refining, and component manufacture?

Or the 'damage radius' of the production of the carbon fibre of its construction?

Or the 'damage radius' of the engineering resins used to make the composites?

Or the 'damage radius' of the cable manufacture?

Then there's the transport of all this stuff...

But most of this happens in countries far, far away. Out of sight, out of mind, eh, except for your favourite hobby-horses?

Except that such precautions are, in fact, unlikely to be necessary. They are only taken because the relevant government (made up from people without proper training in things like risk assessment) feel they have to be seen be "doing something", and feel pressured by the media and egged on by twerps like you, who lack judgement.

Ah! Todays sig looks to be made specially for you.

Wouldn't that have resulted in horribly mutated monsters? At least according to some.

I have always thought that pouring away all that milk after the Windscale fire came into the 'seen be doing something' category.