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From Rod Adams: The most recent example of ineffective response to criticism that is disproportionate to the potential harm is the hullabaloo and attention being paid to "tritium leaks" where measured groundwater levels have reached a maximum of 75,000 picocuries per liter. That scary sounding number, however, is in reference to a unit of measure that is 1 x 10^-12 curies. A picocurie is to a curie as a penny is to 10 BILLION DOLLARS, and a curie is not even a very large unit of measure. A curie of tritium weighs just 0.1 milligrams. That means that anti-nuclear activists are seriously advocating shutting down a power plant with a proven history of providing a reliable, affordable, emission free source of 620 Megawatts of electricity into a New England power grid that needs the power just because some samples of water from a well that is not used for drinking water contains 0.0000000000075 grams of tritium in 1000 grams of water. The saddest part is that there are politicians who seem willing to go along and bend to the pressure. If a person drank water contaminated to a level of 75,000 picocuries per liter for an entire year, they would receive an internal radiation dose of about 16 mrem, which is far below the natural variations in the average annual dose of 360 mrem in the US. ... This time, instead of the leak being an almost non-existent fraction of a gram of material that is only weakly harmful to human health, the leak was a volume of methane large enough so that when it ignited, it exploded. The explosion released a force large enough to kill at least five people, seriously injure dozens of others and cause a noise that was audible as far away as 20-30 miles. It blew out most of the siding of a large industrial building, cracked foundations in homes several hundred yards away and caused a fire that took several hours to bring under control. This type of leak is not uncommon in facilities using methane; large explosions and fires, though less common than leaks, also happen with depressing frequency. After all, the reason that methane - aka natural gas - is used in power plants is that it burns easily and contains a significant concentration of energy. The same characteristic that makes it a valuable fuel also means that it can be a dangerous explosive and fire igniter. In order to produce large quantities of power, the piping supplying power plants has to carry large volumes of gas, which increases the consequences of any leaks. Full: http://atomicinsights.blogspot.com/2010/02/sometimes-best-defense-is-good-offense.html ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
