fukishima and the end of the world

I am paid, or have been up to now, by my university. I'm assuming you've never worked in academia before, so I will say this. Critique, rationality and evidence are at the absolute heart of scientific research. I would have trouble counting the number of times early in my PhD whereby I came to my professor with what I thought was exciting evidence for something, only to be slapped down and told I wasn't being rigorous enough. This is a common thing amongst new students, because we train them to be as critical as possible. The only thing that matters is the evidence. If there is evidence that a reactor is unsafe, then it is in everyone's interest to look at it, and deal with it as soon as possible. There are many flaws in the nuclear industry, and I would be the first to admit them. It is currently dominated by a small number of exceedingly wealthy companies, and is steadily growing more and more reticent about embracing innovation. The corporate environment of some of these companies is also far too incestuous, although this is a legacy of previous issues.

However, every industry has flaws. And I have seen no evidence to suggest that the flaws in the nuclear industry are more prevalent or more serious than any other industry. Nor are they more liable to hurt people.

This reminds me somewhat of an exchange between a former British Member of Parliament, and a chief designer at an engineering company. The subject was a container being used for transporting nuclear waste from the reactor to the reprocessing facility. The MP was extremely critical of nuclear power, and was convinced that waste could not be transported safely. In order to answer such criticisms, a test was performed whereby the flask was not only tipped off a railway car, but a remotely operated train was set on a collision course with it, and allowed to impact it at over 100 mph. Given that the tracks are always cleared before transit, this is a test far more stringent than even the worst case scenario accident.

Before the test, the MP and the chief engineer were standing nearby ready to watch, along with members of the press and other onlookers. The MP taunted the chief engineer:

If you are so confident in this container, I think you should sit in it for this test.

The engineer replied:

I'd be perfectly happy to sit in the container. But only if you agree to drive the train.

Take a look at the test:



I know where I would prefer to be.

im glad everyone here is realizing this is a problem that needs to be fixed

Yeah, I'm only kind of blaming the technology here. I'm well aware that most of the problems could be solved if the involved parties would set it up very well. But we are talking about politicians, lobbyists and multi billion dollar companies. So I'm not going to trust that mix of financial dependencies and money flowing back and forth.

Every time there is a nuclear accident we see the same thing: It's hushed up, misinformation is spread, uncovered, the truth is twisted like a corkscrew and the people living in the area are forgotten within a couple of weeks. After a few days you don't even know whom to trust anymore.

And about the ground water: So, you would swim in the slightly contaminated water. But would you drink it? Or eat the plants you watered with it? Because that is how radioactivity accumulates and ends up in the food chain in Oh Sh!t quantities, isn't it? Suddenly frutti di mare and funghi pizzas are off the menu. And you better use coffee creamer from somewhere where it didn't rain that day.

Sorry for assuming your are from the US, MadScientist.

Why apologize for a compliment?

USA USA USA

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/01/10/3145221/west-virginia-emergency-coal-chemical-spill/

Coal.

I've been searching a lot about the nuclear science and here are not only my toughts but years of research in magazines, newspaper, internet,documentary basically anything i could put my hands on without looking like a terrorist

Nuclear science is safe.lets just Make this clear before we continue
Why?

If we see trought history all the nuclear accidents were caused not only by human flaws but political flaws, lets take chernoobyl as example not only they were pefoming a dangerous test that day but they stabilized the reactor in a wrong way the test was simple see how the reactor react after his waters upply was cut off, now to peform that test the reactos had tobe keept at a potency off 100 mghz, the workers decided to keep him at 200mghz they had problem stabilizing the reactor because in the soviet goverment rush they made a mistake in the reactor core that let him lost or gain power too quickly, to stabilize they had to remove allt he control rods except 4 and let him be cooled by water, now when they cut off the water supply guess what happened?

They tried to insert all the control rods back into the reactor (trought the az-12 emergency buttom)but their bottom was made of grafitty wich caused the reactor to speed up not slow down

Fukushima had a outdated reactor setup because it was too expensive to build a newer one, therefore there were only one water pipe that lead water into the core, today nuclear power plant have 2 or more.

Fission is a natural process, reactors are not time bomb nukes waiting to explode, they are not even made of the same kind of uranium that a nuke is made.

As stated before nuclear reactors are made to hold against anything from tsunamis to meteors

The one to be blamed is not the scientists that worked hard to make this technology marvelous that it's fission, its easy to point figers at then and forgot about the goverment who actually built these power plants.

About the company who just want money talk do you know how much it costs to clean radiation? I think they would prefer keep their reactors safe

In brazil we say something " there is no use to reclaim as lions if you vote as donkey"

LOL