Originally Posted by pie plate

the ugly details are spelled out in a set of papers published in non-jargon but necessarily somewhat technical language at http://www.fairewinds.org/ One would have to spend some hours reading and checking the data to really get it. There are videos there too. "SG" is "steam generator - it's a PWR design where the water that cools the reactor runs through a shell and tube set called SG - the secondary water is pretty clean - it boils, not the water in contact with the reactor fuel tubes. They built hot-rodded unapproved SG trying to squeeze a bit more power out of an old reactor - and it failed, leaking internally contaminated water to the secondary system.

going in favor of solid scientific based management cost the guy at that site everything except his honor. Outside of a few special applications - a moon-base maybe, or a mars-earth shuttle (see project Orion) or fast submarines and medical isotope reactors the nuke stuff makes no long term economic sense. it enriches the few in short term at the expense of hundreds of years of costly and leaky waste problems handed off to the public - it's a slow taking of the public values - similar in effect to the enclosure laws - and they spew from time to time. Stuff happens.

When I was with GE doing nuke re-certs we spoke of the NRC offices on the sites as Nobody Really Cares. I saw 2 guys scalded to death and the work orders and lock-out records falsified before they were dead. . You could buy LSD in the control room at one plant I won't mention. Another man got into confined space filled with trichloroethane vapor - and we got him just in time - he was between a crankshaft and the sump in a diesel engine (standby generator 6 Mw) - and we couldn't get him out w/o ourselves risking death, so I cut an air hose with my Buck and sent 60 cfm onto his face. Unconscious, but not dead. Back to work the next day...no OSHA report. No nothing. All covered up. (I was running the A-Crew on the other engine, a pair, and the guy running the B-crew couldn't find his man, was counting noses, and wandered into MY engine room looking for the guy! I do not trust that kind of manager...he has no business fooling around with dangerous unforgiving "poot". Or even TCE...

In 1913 they built a solar-thermal-steam (pistons!) 50 kw pilot plant in Cairo Egypt. It beat the coal plant economically, but was destroyed deliberately as the war got going...and the engineers all had to leave and do war-work - so it dead-ended. Then they found all that oil! That killed things for a long time.

Combined-cycle solar stuff is cheaper than nukes now, and made, basically, from sand. Maintenance is, depending of design, pretty much just keeping the place orderly, changing an oil filter, punching the tubes in oil coolers, chiller maintenance, simple, easy, cheap. For PV design - it's basic - windex and a squeegee. A few guards to prevent vandalism... Solar PV is also cheaper than GT (gas turbine), or combined GT/steam plant, when one figures the pipe-line, fuel, and cooling water cost over the plant design-life.

Project Orion was a really wild project - look it up. Some stuff is still secret - tied to thermonuke ignition...but the overall design probably would have worked. They planned direct earth surface to mars surface and return in single stage atomic rocket - using small hydrogen bombs - bang - bang -bang - They planned to take a bulldozer, no chit! Nuke has its place, but like uncle albert said, it's a hellofaway to boil water!

A prompt criticality is a low order atomic explosion - about like dynamite - fairly slow as these things go. TEPCO claimed it was steam from an H2/air explosion, but the color of the smoke matches PuO2 Plutonium dioxide, one of the oxidation states of Pu. H2 + O would have been white...it's steam. PT release a blast of radiation - deadly, depending, over several hundred yards radius - along those lines.

Obviously I could go on, but there's no point. They're pretty much a racket. Get the money and trash the place...a familiar tactic these days...

Pax,

Plate

Originally Posted by QC

I'm pretty sure I haven't.
What makes you ask?

Originally Posted by rwhisen

I took this picture flying into Portland today...



Mt. Hood with Mt. Adams in the background

Originally Posted by rwhisen

I noticed a somewhat unnecessary post today and was wondering if someone had one of Norman's "Power of Positive Thinking" books laying around for this particular person to read..

Originally Posted by QC

Sure is, Dan.
Russ, there is a 3rd mountain in the background, know which it is? Quite the impressive line-up of volcanoes.

Originally Posted by QC

Hey, Baker! Good that you made it that far, so far.
Following flatlanders in the mountains