K.Takeshita wrote: > On 11/26/06 3:53 PM, "mike wilson", <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >>The (at least) two that we've already had don't count, then? I know >>farmers in Wales still affected after Chernobyl, twenty years ago. Nor >>the fire in the graphite core at Windscale that spread radioactive >>particles over most of western England? It's not the frequency that >>matters, it's the magnitude. > > > Yes, I was almost referring to these :-). > But those two were badly designed examples. Soviet one did not even have > sufficient core cooling capability. Graphite core reactors also are usually > obsolete. Most modern power reactors are light water (ordinary H2O) based > or some heavy water based (Canadian ones). Their records, in spite of a > couple of accidents, are excellent. No China Syndrome. Last time I worked > on those was 20 years ago but the technologies advanced.
I was actually referring to three. Don't forget Three Mile Island. That and Chernobyl were, to all intents and purposes, China syndrome incidents. Both mainly caused, not by poor maintenance or defective design, but by human intervention. If there had not been the fire at Windscale, how many grpahite core reactors would we have today? They are a _lot_ cheaper to build..... > The over-engineering problems and very strict regulatory requirements almost > drove away investors. Regulatory clearance/environmental hearing alone > takes several years before obtaining the license to build one of those nuke > plants, and they take another several years of construction before the > actual power generation, with billions of dollars of fund required. And then, in at least one case in the UK, they spend 40% of their life unfunctional due to problems of design and construction. > With this long lead time, the power company still has to forecast the future > power demand fairly accurately and then have to finance those projects. > That's why most of these power are being built with some government > incentives to alleviate the risk or by giant private utility companies like > in Japan. It was not quite like that years ago in the U.S. for example. > Look what happened in the U.S. reactor market in the last few decades. Non > built. Now the Bush Administration is talking about building more nuke > plants, now that they figured that they cannot divert the oil from Iraq > (just kidding :-). Maybe you are but I think it's only a matter of time. > I cannot authoritatively say this but if the licensing requirements for nuke > plants come down reasonably even a bit, the cost of electricity from them > could come down by at least 30%. Then electric powered vehicles could > become a feasible proposition. I can't see a feasible alternative to nuclear power at the moment but a lot more thought needs to go into planning before the public will accept nuclear power stations in their back yard. Or we have a few heat- and light- less winters due to fuel shortages. Then they will be _demanded_. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
