and these guys run nuclear power stations....

So the electricity produced at nuclear power stations has been of no
benefit to society?

 

The electricity may well have been of benefit to society. The cock ups
leading to nuclear material being spread all over the shop haven't. From
what I understand, it's extremely difficult to accurately cost Nuclear
electricity due to the fact that building & cleanup costs are so nebulous.

 

I think that very few people would argue that overall the UK hasn't
benefited from having nuclear power.

Millions have been employed in the nuclear industry (civil and
military) and without it we wouldn't all be able to turn our lights on
whenever we want (1) and if you want a more up to date example of
where we'll benefit have a look at the massive oil ands gas reserves
currently being discovered in the South Atlantic. Without the
interference of a certain nuclear submarine those reserves would
belong to Argentina instead of belonging to people who feel they owe
us *big* time.

 

A bit like how you can use footnotes whenever you want. Or not.

 

On Mon, 07 Dec 2009 16:32:22 +0000, Andy Bonwick

snip>

The footnote thief removed this:

(1) I can certainly remember the days of scheduled power cuts and no
tv after 10pm. Without nuclear power we'd have had them for at least
one period since then.

 

I've got an excuse, I'm recovering from another bout of knock out
drops this morning and only got in from the hospital an hour ago.

Yes, I was posting from the luxury of my private hospital bed earlier.

 

Yes, millions may have been employed in the nuclear industry, but, if it
turns out that after you've built, run, and cleaned up after your nuclear
stations that you've made a loss, and would have been better off sticking up
a couple of cheap and quick coal stations, then it's been of no benefit to
society. At the moment, nobody seems to agree on what nuclear power costs.

I know a nuclear sub contains what is essentially a small powerstation.
Nevertheless, Nuclear subs != nuclear power stations.

 

Well, they did own AMC at the time, so I assume they gave some technical
assistance. That said, the Cherokee is an enormously long lived model.

 

[...]

Oh please, if that's the case then also nobody seems to agree on what coal
power costs or, as a matter of fact, what anything costs. Which clearly
proves
that we should, in fact, do nothing and keep living in the caves.

The human deaths caused by "cheap and quick coal stations" are staggering
in amount when compared to deaths caused by nuclear power - deaths of
coal miners, radioactive ash polluting the air and causing cancer, toxic
emissions etc.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/deaths-per-twh-for-all-energy-sources.html

For the US, coal results in 15 deaths per TWh and nukes globally result in
0,04 deaths per TWh (global average for coal is 161 deaths per TWh).
How many dollars would you assign to the value of people killed so you
could run your AC with "cheap and quick" coal power?

 

Indeedy, thank Ged* you don't have an Alfa 164 or Range Rover P38a. It's
about a 14 hour job to change the heater stepper motors on a 164 -
despite them being BOSCH / Saab bits they still fail with monotonous
regularity - and on the P38a there's a little 20p rubber seal that
perishes on the heater matrix to pipe union that pisses boiling hot
antifreeze all over your left leg when it bursts and it's a days work to
change unless you don't mind cutting holes everywhere in the dashboard.



--
Pete M - OMF#9

'78 Escort 1300 Sport
'99 Audi A6 V6 Quattro Avant


"It's an Alfa, it will go wrong, it will piss you off, why should your
Alfa experience be different from everyone else's.
Now get back out there and swear at it before something else breaks."

 

I'm not making a judgement either way on Nuclear. As I understand it, the
cost of nuclear energy is still a matter of debate...

 

Eh? Which one?

(And BTW: People who use the above phrase -or who too readily agree
with it- invariably do so with the implication that *they* would never
sink to letting their emotions sway a decision: a statement
exceedingly unlikely, save they were built by IBM.)

 

Did they leak though? The Thresher sank in very deep water. One
estimate had Thresher's reactor hitting the seabed (OK, ooze) at
around 100mph. The submarine didn't just sink; it imploded violently.
Debris (of the entire sub) was scattered over a large area. We also
have to assume that the reactor hasn't corroded, though I imagine that
it was probably made of stainless steel, but if any of the fittings
were of other materials, it might be rotting away even as I type...

 

And the problem with that is ?

There is **** all worth watching on the box that late anymore.

oh.... except True Blood

 

It's not something I can really discuss (or speculate about) in a
newsgroup given that I work on the construction of our subs and I know
plenty about the EBC ones but you can sleep well knowing the oceans
are safe.

 

Jolly good.

That means that those bizzarre-looking fish and glowing eels got that
way naturallly. Sheesh.

 

Hypothesis was they would implode, the cores would quickly corrode in the
sea water and the sediment would sink into the mud.

Just shows how things have changed for the better in some ways. Imagine the
outcry if a few live nukes were dumped over Europe or left lying on the sea
floor now.

 

I repeat what I said above ;-)

 

The major re-design was necessary because the number of collaborators
that could be carried was limited.

 

<gloom>
And instead of taking it out into mid-Atlantic, the lazy bastards often
just dumped crap into the Irish Sea.