Wampum

Do you know that the water there is from the river and is several loops away from anything containing radioactivity? The river water is a bit too warm to use for cooling efficiently, so the towers serve as backup. The plant immediately powered down to less than 50% capacity to avoid overheating. There was no release of radioactivity. There was no danger to anyone, except the goof that knew the wood was sagging and did nothing about it. I hope they fired his tucas.

Nuclear power can be done safely. The problem is, doing it safely is expensive. But since coal and oil are becoming far more expensive because of causing global warming, nuclear power is becoming more competitive.

Thank you, however, a link to the Wikpedia section on the collapse would have had at least as much information as your comment.

If you have thoughts on HR 6, and you've obviously arrived at some conclusion, or the insignificance of unplanned structural failure to risk calculation for complex systems, please continue.

I didn't look up Wikipedia, I simply went from memory and an understanding of how power plants work -- my very worn copy of Bird, Stewart and Lightfoot should answer how I know that. (My grade of "No Comment" on my paper in my first Radiochemistry class in college is another story....) After reading your comment, I dug through Wikipedia to find the article on the Vermont Yankee reactor. I'm pretty sure they're wrong -- the plant would not have needed to drop to below 30% capacity and what I heard from people who saw the incident notice on the collapse indicated it didn't. If the operators did drop it to 30% as a safety precaution, I can't fault them for that.

Still, the Wikipedia article does back me up in the most important point: "The accident was simply a mess and an inconvenience and it did not threaten the reactor, or release any radiation into the environment."

The image you chose is typical for the mainstream press and seemed to indicate a similar lack of understanding. How often do they talk about the risk of nuclear power and show the vapor from the cooling towers? When they show radioactive leaks from a nuclear power plant in most movies or TV shows (even "24"), they show vapor from the cooling towers. You seemed to be making the same mistake and, until your comment, did nothing to dispel that.

What was the point that you were trying to make with the image, then?

If you're going to criticize HR 6, then let's talk about the risk of more nuclear energy vs. continuing as we are or using other forms of energy production or having 6 billion people go back to a pre-industrial revolution level of technology (which would be environmentally devastating).

Don't throw up deliberately misleading pictures and then get offended when I question it.

What was the point that you were trying to make with the image, then?

From the second of my Formark 1 pieces:

As recently as three years ago the Portland Press Herald editorialized on the predictability, and hence the safety, of nuclear reactors.

The photo of a failed structure is simply less abstract, and at least as meaningful to the non-specialist reader than a directed graph with the edges annotated with the probability of transition ...

Given the history of atmospheric dispersal (mentioned in the Formark 1 piece) from the early atmospheric weapons tests to containment failures, I suspect that visible vapor, as misleading as the image is, is at least as effective a device, for fiction or reporting (a different kind of fiction).

What representational alternative do you suggest?

The problem with the image you selected is that to anyone with even a small amount of knowledge of the subject, the image is both ignorant and wrong and causes them to disregard what you have to say. I gave you the benefit of the doubt, because I know you from this blog. My wife can't understand why I'm wasting time discussing this with you. I've just had extensive training in this and related fields; she was an engineer who worked at a Pittsburgh facility where she would design "elements" for nuclear reactors and then manufacture prototypes herself. They made her take a course in how to avoid creating a critical mass while working in the shop. I still get a kick out of that....

A picture of TMI or Chernobyl might have been better. The thing is, neither of those incidents were structural failures either. Both were due to human stupidity: Babcock and Wilcox (yes, my pocket version of steam tables was from them and is dated the same year as the TMI incident) received notice on the triple-failure scenario but didn't bother to implement new procedures at TMI; The idiot political officer at Chernobyl had them turn off all the safeties and then scram the reactor to see if they could get everything back on line in time to prevent a meltdown -- without practicing first. Needless to say, they weren't successful.

Structural failures aren't the problem. Human greed and stupidity are. Any structural failures that have happened in nuclear reactors have resulted in trivial releases of radiation -- coal-fired plants release far more radiation than that for the same amount of electricity produced (radioactive decay products are locked in the coal and only released with burning).

If you were going to get worried about something, get worried about what's done with the waste products. We're stupidly preparing to encase this stuff in ways that will make it expensive to use, or alternatively, storing it in water-filled spent fuel pits that make inviting terrorist targets. You can hit a nuclear reactor with a fuel-laden 747 and not create a release of radiation. The same 747 (or simple guided missile) into the spent fuel pits will result in a major catastrophe. And yes, this is widely known, so I'm not telling the terrorists anything; the Bush administration knows, too, but doesn't want to disturb their industry friends so they don't make them fix this problem and instead work at curtailing our civil rights in the mistaken name of safety.

(Design of a "breeder" reactor that turns spent fuel into fuel that can't be weaponized should be a high priority. Don't throw the radwaste away, use it!)

The real trick for nuclear power might be what the Navy does: people in charge of the program are at high risk for having to live in the nuclear-powered vessel for a year or more at a time. Put housing at the nuclear plant for the heads of the corporation and force them and their families to live there. Safety will become a much higher priority. Trivial leaks won't be treated as trivial.

Let's say I did a post on my blog about Indian affairs, say that recent vote disenfranchising a lot of people traditionally considered Cherokee. How seriously would you take the post if, to illustrate the article, I used a picture of a white guy dressed up like a scary savage Mohawk warrior from some 1950s movie?

That's what your image accomplishes for your post.