One of my correspondents, who may wish to remain anonymous, wrote to me: >I was always uncomfortable whenever conventional Nuclear energy was proposed >as clean and safe. >The accidents and close calls and contaminations happen everywhere there is >Nuclear power, it isn't safe.
I would like to share my response. Naturally, I have mixed feelings about nuclear power. I think everyone on Vortex does -- this is a technically knowledgable group and we all know that a large machine can be dangerous, and there are always pros and cons. Having said that, I have to ask: It isn't safe compared to what? It is lot safer than coal, which spews millions of tons of radioactive garbage, and is probably destroying the world with global warming. It is safer than oil, which pays for terrorism. Okay, it is a more dangerous than wind power, but unfortunately there is not enough wind in Georgia or Japan to make a significant contribution. I feel angry at these Japanese managers and technicians partly because they have betrayed their profession -- they have betrayed us, and people like Mizuno, who trained in nuclear technology. They may even have destroyed the future of nuclear power in Japan, which is bad news for global warming. Engineers are supposed to tell the truth! And if only they *had* honored the truth, and openly reported the problem the first time, the following accidents would not have happened. Suppose the first time those rods fell out of the stack and into the bottom of the containment vessel they told the regulators, told the public, and most important, warned the other operators with the same kind of reactor. The problem would have been fixed instead of re-occuring time after time, and being covered up. The sequence of events that destroyed the Three Mile Island reactor happened twice before at other plants made by the same company. Twice before the valve jammed open and there was no sensor to properly warn the operators. In both cases the problem was discovered before it led to serious consequences. A low-level NRL regulator took notice, wrote it up, and tried to have the equipment and control board modified to keep it from happening again. But no one listened, and the third time the problem went all the way and melted about a third of the core. If only the information had been brought into the light, and taken seriously, the accident never would have happened. It could have been avoided easily, with some simple modifications. Keeping these kinds of secrets is a violation of ethics of engineering and scientific research, and a horribly stupid thing to do. - Jed
