Reichstag Fire: 102 minutes that changed America

[Brian Morrison]

Indeed it doesn't, but it still came close to a disaster back then.

[Halmyre]

Yes, but that's not the point.

-- Halmyre

[The Natural Philosopher]

Three mile island is not in Europe Three mile island wasnt a power station. It was a plutonium breeding reactor.

Neither killed anyone IIRC.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Well actually it is.

Windscale was an open hearth reactor breeding plutonium.

It wasn't a power station at all.

You cannot lump the power sector with any random nuclear installation and tar them with the same brush.

Unless you are Greenpeace of course.

[Man at B&Q]

Only if you're a tree hugger trying to accelerate Europe's headlong dash into energy starvation.

To the rest of us it is a very salient point in any discussion about the safety of nuclear power.

MBQ

[The Natural Philosopher]

well only to say 'dont operate a raector 5 times beyond its design limit in areas that have never been assesed for safety without even being in a containment vessel and with the whole thing open to the sky'

But, since no one else ever has done such a blatantly stupid thing since, its largely academic.

And of course, no one was killed.

Now about that oil rig fire..that killed how many?

Ah 167.

More than have died in the worlds nuclear POWER industry in 50 years INCLUDING chernobyl IIRC.

[Brian Morrison]

[Halmyre]

It was still a nuclear facility. You can't blandly assert that Russia had all the dangerous installations, whether power stations or not, when Windscale and TMI were two pretty major incidents. The UK and the US were lucky; Russia less so.

-- Halmyre

[Man at B&Q]

And how many KSI in boiler explosions during the infancy of steam power?

MBQ

[Len GM0ONX]

Or miners round the world (especially China), to feed coal fired power stations.

[The Natural Philosopher]

First of apologies for saying TMI when I meant windscale.

TMI was a problem, the safety systems coped, and no one died.

Lessons were learnt.

Windscale was total government induced madness. It wasn't a power station at all.

It has no relevance to nuclear power beyond an example of how not to do things, and no one has since, nor ever will.

The facts are that whilst countless people die in industrial accidents and other accidents every year, no one dies from accidents in nuclear power plants, and with the exception of Chernobyl, no one ever has, to the best of my knowledge.

The net contribution of the nuclear industry including recycling of waste - the most 'leaky' apart of the national operation, is less than

1% of the total radioactivity we are exposed to. Its safer to live next to a power station than on Dartmoor. For example.

When an oil rig caught fire and 167 people died, its sad, but it doesn't stop oil drilling. The incident was front page news and led to a few changes in standards, and was largely forgotten.

When a tiny piece of radioactive material was dropped on the floor of a reactor during reloading, under Green pressure, Germany was forced to shut down all development of nuclear power. No one was hurt. No one even received noteworthy levels of radiation. It made the front pages and sparked a huge debate. Germany still operates a few reactors. Most Germans believe they have no nuclear power.

France has operated a series of reactors for decades with no incidents resulting in loss of life. So have many other European countries and Japan.

The ONLY power station accident that killed, was Chernobyl. You can read up why it happened, why the design was inherently poor, why it is not used anywhere outside the Soviet Union, and what the actual outcomes were, if you dig a bit.

The final death toll was IIRC 76. All people directly involved in the fire itself. Less than half the death toll of Piper Alpha. Its probably the worst conceivable scenario, and has left a ghost town, but arguably it was a lot better than e.g. Bhopal.

Those are the facts.

The PERCEPTION is entirely different. Most people think that thousands died and will continue to die as a result of Chernobyl. Most people think that Windscale was an accident at a nuclear power station. Most people think that a few grams of fissionable material a hundred miles away will condemn them to if not instant death, but certainly cancer and an early demise, most people thing that when greenpeace talks about 'hundreds of tons of nuclear waste every year' and 'with a half life of

10,000 years' they are talking about the same thing: they are not. Low level waste with a short half life is the bulk of it. High level waste, is suitable for reprocessing anyway, and is measured in tens of tons at most. Most people in Germany think they have no nuclear power. Most peoplel think that windmills are cheaper than nuclear power. Most people think that putting energy saving bulbs in the toilet will save the planet. Most people think that teh current government is green and committed to lots of windmills. In fact they are talking about a serious expansion in coal and nuclear power.

.

There's no accounting for fools, but don't let them dictate energy policy.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I shudder to think.

The death rate from RTA was higher in the days of horses..no bloody brakes!

[The Natural Philosopher]

Or woodcutters killed by falling trees.

Or twig collectors trampled by woolly mammoths..

Remember Folks, this is what Greenpeace want to bring back!

[Francis Burton]

Some interesting stats on how these affect life expectancy:

[Dave]

I can vouch for that. In the aerospace industry, spent uranium is used as ballast. (I think I am right in saying that it is heavier than lead.) The reason that ballast is needed is to put the C of G of an aircraft within a short distance, or on the centre of lift. If it isn't, it makes the aircraft difficult to fly, as it becomes an unstable vehicle.

You should have seen peoples reaction when I handed a piece to them and told them what it was. You would have thought I had nuked them.

Dave

[dennis]

There was a nuclear reactor used for space heating at an army base in America that killed a few. Basically cr@p design where you had to manually control the rods and the main rod would allow reactor runaway if moved too far. No physical stop was fitted and at some point an operator moved it too far resulting in a radioactive steam explosion.

They had to scrape the body parts from the ceiling and burry them in a lead coffin.

[Ian F.]

Oh, grow the f*ck up!

Ian

[geoff]

In Papua New Guinea ?

That's some deflector magnets ...

[The Natural Philosopher]

From the link..

"Clearly, we have here a highly irrational situation. How did it come about?It's easy to find out. Just ask the government officials who make decisions of this type about safety requirements on nuclear plants. It turns out that at least some of these people understand the problems we are discussing. But they are powerless to follow the rational course."

"The reason is that the first priority of a government official is to be responsive to public concern. That is the way a democracy operates, and that is the way we want it to operate. Anyone with a high position in government must be responsive to public concern or that person will not remain in office. Our problem, then, is not one of irrational behavior by government officials. It is rather a problem of misplaced public concern. The public has been very poorly educated on the hazards of radiation and of nuclear power."

Indeed. One could say that as a result of state education the public has been very poorly educated..about pretty much anything at all.

[geoff]

Or trampled to death by woolly mammoths while out collecting fire wood

we just don't know, we just don't know