On 4/15/2011 5:26 AM, 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.
>
No, the "big" mistakes where:

1. Having no way to cool it, or certainty that the power systems would 
still work, to do so, if enough failures happened. And, no, battery 
backup doesn't work, if it lasts less than 24 hours.

2. Placing the old, spent, fuel in something that was ever *less* 
effectively cooled.

And, I would add 3. Presuming that a *big* reactor, which produces 
massive amounts of power, but where it would be nearly impossible to 
either make it less hazardous, or run battery backup long enough, or 
otherwise create a system that *could* compensate for major problems, 
remains bloody stupid.

In simpler terms, a small reactor wouldn't need to use as many, as hot, 
as poor emergency systems, etc., to do the same job, for a single city. 
Its having 4-5 reactors of that size, operating the power for dozens of 
cities, nearly all operating by narrow margins, which is the problem. 
And, even when they did improve things, it was to improve how waste 
energy/heat got recycled, to reduce the inefficiency of the system 
(something that could reduce our need in the US for plants by half, or 
more, if we did it, but we won't, because it costs to much to redo 
thousands of *old* plants, that where never built to do that, never mind 
those operating on 80 different sorts of fuel/energy sources.

The US systems are inefficient, and "smart power" won't change that, 
without altering the things "running" off the power, and the plants 
themselves. And, both of those cost more than just making smarter 
switches, and some smarter meters. But, more to the point, the theory is 
always, "Find a way to make lots, then send it some place else." This is 
damn stupid. It means more danger at the source, larger fuel use at the 
source, bigger disasters *when* they happen, fewer, and less effective, 
means to handle them, when they happen, and then you *waste* half of it 
in the first 3 miles, while running it 500 miles to the town that needs it.

Imagine if the Fukushima reactors had each been even 50% the size, with 
say 25% of the fuel rods, and better access. Cooling could have been fed 
in easier, a means to get into/fix things would have been simpler, etc. 
And, that isn't even speaking to options that might have existed, to 
simply kill the reactions *given the right design*, or lower it to the 
point where even with nothing working, it wasn't as big a risk.

We need "local" power. Shipping it on from external points, and hoping 
it all works, and is safe, was a great idea when you didn't care if you 
lost most of it, and all you needed to run was a few thousand light 
bulbs. Now.. its a waste of resources, and anything that can supply it 
is dangerous, and not just do to size, but do to the level of constant 
operation needed to just keep things working, including the plants 
themselves.

So, that would be my answer. Stop wasting resources on distant power 
systems, and build more local, smaller, less dangerous ones. Ones you 
don't care if you faze out, if other improvements crop up, like better 
solar. Otherwise... There are ways to reduce the need for distant/local 
sources, even with what is available, that, if not perfect, still 
reduces, for the short term, how much crap is used instead. But, those 
things are not going to be driven by corporations, they won't be driven 
by people in the pocket of them, and they won't be driven by buyers, 
unless the buyers get their heads out of their asses and stop doing 
things like whining about how they don't like 1st/2nd gen fluorescent 
bulbs, so they *must* have their old ones, and similar short sighted idiocy.

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