On 15/04/2011 13:26, Bill Pragnell wrote:
> Invisible<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
>> Nuclear power works in theory. In practise, if you make even the tiniest
>> mistake, just once, everything is ruined forever. (Or at least, for
>> several centuries.) And there's nothing you can do to fix it.
>
> That's not really true. Chernobyl was caused by a very long chain of mistakes,
> all committed with a reactor design which was already itself a long chain of
> mistakes. It should be noted that most other countries have never built a
> reactor that could fail as catastrophically as this, even through wilful
> sabotage.
>
> TMI was also long chain of mistakes, which resulted in only the reactor being
> ruined, and they did fix it.
>
> I suppose you could say that Fukushima was really only one very big mistake,
> i.e. how big a tsunami was ever likely to be. However, they show every sign of
> being able to fix it eventually.

That's kind of my point. You only need to be slightly wrong about one 
tiny thing, and it's game over.

Fires can be put out, even oil spills can be mopped up [eventually]. But 
radiation is forever. [Or rather, "for such a huge time period that it 
might as well be forever".]

> I long ago ceased to get any information on the nuclear industry from the
> mainstream media. None of them understand it, and they all profit from making it
> look bad.

I tend to take anything they say with a large pinch of salt.

Take, for example, the London airport "disaster". I forget the exact 
details, but a plane had to crash land due to some kind of mechanical 
failure. "So, how could such a serious safety failure have happened?" 
they ask. Um, excuse me? The plane CRASH LANDED, and not only did every 
single man, women and child on board walk off completely unharmed, THEY 
DIDN'T EVEN REALISE IT WAS A CRASH LANDING! That's not a safety failure. 
That's an epic SUCCESS! WTF, people?!

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