Ex-Regulator Says Reactors Are Flawed
Source: NYT
All 104 nuclear power reactors now in operation in the United States have a safety problem that cannot be fixed and they should be replaced with newer technology, the former chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said on Monday. Shutting them all down at once is not practical, he said, but he supports phasing them out rather than trying to extend their lives.
The position of the former chairman, Gregory B. Jaczko, is not unusual in that various anti-nuclear groups take the same stance. But it is highly unusual for a former head of the nuclear commission to so bluntly criticize an industry whose safety he was previously in charge of ensuring.
Asked why he did not make these points when he was chairman, Dr. Jaczko said in an interview after his remarks, I didnt really come to it until recently.
I was just thinking about the issues more, and watching as the industry and the regulators and the whole nuclear safety community continues to try to figure out how to address these very, very difficult problems, which were made more evident by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan, he said. Continuing to put Band-Aid on Band-Aid is not going to fix the problem.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/09/us/ex-regulator-says-nuclear-reactors-in-united-states-are-flawed.html
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)more independence. We should invest the money in safer energy producing technology. We need to say goodbye to nuclear. Too expensive and too dangerous.
avaistheone1
(14,626 posts)kristopher
(29,798 posts)cosmicone
(11,014 posts)convert gyms from motorized equipment to non-motorized and generate electricity from all the people exercising inside by using generators attached to bikes, treadmills and ellipticals.
This electrocity may allow the gyms to offer discounted memberships which will attract even more people to exercise.
Electricity from fat burning is the cleanest and healthiest of them all. We can solve the obesity, pollution and energy problems with one change.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)do. Of course, what if only one person is bicycling at some time. Do the lights go out?
Sounds like the germ of an interesting enterprise. See what you can do with it.
Maybe to start, some of the equipment in your gym could be hooked up to a generator somehow, and you could give people a choice of whether to use the energy-generating equipment or the coin-operated public energy equipment.
That might be interesting.
Journeyman
(15,001 posts)Why, all reactors are designed and built by the finest minds in the universe, schooled in the dark arts of garbage burning and ever mindful of the safety of corporate profits. How can anyone say versions of the Eighth Wonder of the World are anything but perfection itself?
And even more perplexing, how could an NRC Chairman have kept silent on such a little matter as safety problems that cannot be fixed? Why, it's almost as if he were a regretful whore, paid to do the bidding before of whoever held his money at the moment, regardless of the welfare of those for whom he was responsible, now racked with guilt over his putrid cowardice and shameful life.
I appreciate he's come forward, even at this late moment. But I'll be damned if I'll hold him in anything but utter contempt.
kristopher
(29,798 posts)He had to resign a year before his tenure ended because he wouldn't go along with the program. Now he is free of the obligation of his office to try and work within the system and he is speaking out.
At no time have his actions been those of a craven corporate whore.
caraher
(6,276 posts)Basically, he's saying existing GW-scale reactors are too big NOT to fail (at least in various loss-of-cooling scenarios). I guess whether that makes them "flawed" depends on one's faith in always being able to come up with a way to maintain cooling in an accident, or never to have such accidents in the first place. Obviously at Fukushima such faith proved unwarranted!
His overall recommendation sounds like it could be music to the ears of the small modular reactor crowd. And it's also clear that he's advocating a phaseout and not wholesale immediate shutdowns. I'd certainly prefer to see reactors with newer technology rather than extending licenses out as far as 60 and 80 years.
And of course, that leaves aside the question of whether we can do without nuclear; my last remark is just my gut feeling regarding which of two alternatives for fission I'd prefer. What role fission should play in the overall energy mix is less clear to me.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)squandering tax-payer money on nuclear subsidies no matter who it kills or how much it costs.
I remember back in high school (70s) having a poster of L-5 colonies with orbital solar-powered stations beaming power back to earth by microwave.
I thought that was the future.
Actually, I thought we had a future.
I mourn that the youth of today have nothing to be optimistic about. Of all the science fiction writers, it seems that only Orwell got it right.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)The guy told the truth about Fukushima, calling it an emergency for the United States.
The guy told the truth about nuclear power, calling its safety beyond our technical abilities.
We need more people with...what was that word that I heard a lot more of when I was a kid 50 years ago?
Oh, yeah! INTEGRITY.