Aneirin
Posts: 6121
Joined: 3/18/2006
From: Tamaris
Status: offline
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: jlf1961
quote:
ORIGINAL: Aneirin
Who runs your nuclear power stations, state or private corporations ?
With the latter, I would be worried, why, because of the shareholder profit/ service/safety equation
Although Britain has had a nuclear disaster an incident which reached level 5 on the 7point scale of the international nuclear event scale in 1957 which resulted in the name of the adjoining town being changed from Windscale to Sellafield. This was matched by the incident at Three Mile Island, but exceeded by Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi which reached level 7, major accident.
But, looking at the scale on wikipedia brings home the fact that Nuclear energy is anything but safe of those incidents that have been recorded and catagorised.
But interesting in that the UK Windscale plant was initially built to make plutonium for atom bombs and it was because of advanced weapons requirements that the level 5 disaster happened in the first place.
Fucking war mongers again.
May I point out that other power plants are not entirely safe, and before you go off and say the damage from non-nuclear plants are not near as dangerous, I suggest you read Tennessee sludge spill estimate grows to 1 billion gallons. The contamination of the river is long lasting and polluting.
In point of fact, all forms of energy generation with the exception of hydroelectric, geo thermal, solar and wind farms have inherent dangers. The air pollution from burning fossil fuels is probably just as long lasting as nuclear contamination, and in the long run, nearly as hazardous.
The trouble with pollution of whatever form was demonstrated well in the DeepWaterHorizon disaster of last year, all around the area blew up a fit, because the pollution in the form of oil and it's deposits posed a visible reminder. Now take nuclear and radiation polluting a water course from say an over swamped waste fuel pool as might happen in this flood, the pollution released will be an insidious problem, because unlike oil, it is invisible to the human eye. Fair enough there will be a hoohar about the possible initial release of such pollution, but whilst the companies concerned are keeping schtum about the threat or otherwise bullshitting about design and all that bollocks, people who place their trust in such companies worry. Say there is a breach, will it be reported and if not how long before people start reporting symptoms that may be in private discussed as symptoms of ionising radiation poisoning.Will a private company own up to its failure and suffer the monetary cost of their actions, or will they let it slide and keep their heads down denying they were the cause of the problem ?
Perhaps sadly many believe where there is profit to be obtained from any action, all notions of truth go out of the window and that because shareholders always come first in many, if not all business operations, that notion has been demonstrated time and time again whenever there is an issue of a company's waste poisoning the enviroment.
Not that everyone is that concerned for nature and it's habitat, but because it is known whatever hits the envirioment will eventually hit people via their livelihood if not their health.
In this case of possible nuclear contamination, if I were the head of a company faced with such a situation at least to allay public fears, I would be ordering whilst we still can measures beyond sand bags to get the people on side, a case of we tried our best, but shit happened beyond what we or the experts calculated what would happen and that because there is always a factor beyond control that nature sometimes seems to compromise.
In effect, I as a head would be ordering the raising the height of such a radiation containing pool wall, beyond the worst estimate of how high the waters will rise and there perhaps doubling that figure and adding a bit if necessary, as what is the price on concrete as compared to future litigation ?
All forms of energy generation contain risks to us via the enviroment, but what can be seen can be acted upon, or is it because it is unseen it is simply not there and here I wonder if the DeepWater Horizon clean up is yet complete, or has it left a legacy for our or rather your or at least those whose lives depend on the area's futures ?
_____________________________
Everything we are is the result of what we have thought, the mind is everything, what we think, we become - Guatama Buddha
Conservatism is distrust of people tempered by fear - William Gladstone
|
RE: Paranoia or reality? - 
Profile
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread