Would we have nuclear power replace electrical power?
EDIT: Also no Chernobyl
EDIT: Also no Chernobyl
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No 3 Mile Island Incident
- Thread starter loneranger
- Start date
Detroitman32
Banned
Erm... nuclear power provides electricity, unless we invent something completely new. However nuclear power would be more widespread, which is what I think you're getting at.
Bill Cameron
Banned
Randomideaguy,
I'm an ex-navy nuc and work in a business that supports the nuclear industry so I'm going to tell you something that defies "conventional wisdom". In the long run, the TMI accident was an overall benefit for the US civilian nuclear industry.
Unlike the French, Japanese, or USN programs, the US civilian industry at the time was almost absurdly balkanized. Each utility was running their own fiefdom, rarely talking to or sharing data with other operators even if those other operators had similar plants.
Case in point; the Davis-Besse plant outside of Toledo had the same initial problem that TMI did almost one year earlier with the difference being that the operators on duty at Davis-Besse correctly diagnosing the problem and reacting to it properly. Because of the balkanized nature of the industry at the time, no one at TMI had heard of the Davis-Besse incident and thus could not learn from it.
Substantive and important changes to training, data sharing, and industry practices are a direct result of TMI. It was a good thing in the long term that prevented plant construction in the short term due to an extremely poor public relations effort and an almost wholly ignorant populace.
Chernobyl was a disaster waiting to happen. It's design would have never made it off the drawing board in the West, it's construction would have been condemned, it's operators never licensed, and the "experiment" they attempted never authorized. Like the AK-47, Chernobyl was just another in a long line of human catastrophes that are the only true legacy of Soviet Union.
Not having Chernobyl occur means that the other reactors of the same design aren't shutdown and retrofitted to something approaching civilized safety standards.
Bill
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Yes, but it's arguably killed more people than any other weapon since 1945.
I remember watching the 3 Mile Island Congressional hearings. One of the AEC/NRC (I forget when they switched) was testifying as to radiation levels in the area surrounding the plant. He then took readings in the commitee room. They were much higher.
Bill Cameron
Banned
Aranfan,
Hear that distant sonic boom and see those thin contrails tens of thousands of meters in the sky?
That's the point I was making passing over you head.
Bill