clipka wrote:

> Stefan Viljoen schrieb:
> 
>> Yes... again I must be clouded by my experience and what goes on here.
>> Our one nuclear plant had all its experienced operators fired a few years
>> ago and replaced with "affirmative" people - so I wouldn't be so sure. In
>> the first world, you're hopefully right.
> 
> Uh... /very/ bad idea...

You don't say. Fortunately I live about 1300km from these reactors. And 
UPWIND!

The thing is, the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station is very "Chernobyl-ly" if I 
can call it that. It (like all SA power stations) runs flat-out ALL THE TIME 
- if it is shut down for any reason, we usually have nationwide power cuts 
and "load-shedding" to prevent our national grid imploding. So there is 
intense pressure NEVER to shut it down, for any reason, even for absolutely 
critical maintenance that could have an enormous safety impact.

And it is -old-, built in the late 1960's.

And it has quite incompetent operators / controllers. (And maintainers - 
they once dropped a -wrench- into a turbo-generator there - can you believe 
such incompetence around a device costing 10s of millions of dollars and of 
national strategic importance? We had load-shedding for two weeks after 
that!)

And it has managers more interested in affirmative action than safety.

:)

One of the joys of living here, I guess! I've personally seen affirmative 
action with concomitant incompetence kill -many- people while still in the 
fire services - but this one could be a REAL score for our government's 
policy of "empowerment and affirmative action at ANY cost" - including 
having a nuclear accident if that is what is "required" to have people of 
the right ethnic background in responsible positions. So be it!

Unfortunately my mother lives quite close to this potential radiological 
horror, and whenever I visit there I find myself checking each morning if I 
can hear birds singing... If I can't, its probably too late to get the hell 
out of Dodge anyway.
-- 
Stefan Viljoen

Post a reply to this message