South Korea To Restart Its Oldest Nuclear Reactor 129
ananyo writes "South Korea's oldest nuclear reactor is set to restart after a four-month closure, despite strong opposition from local residents and activists. The Kori-1 reactor in Busan was shut down on 13 March, after it was revealed that the reactor and its emergency generator had temporarily lost power during routine maintenance the month before, causing the coolant temperature to rise. The power failure did not cause an accident, but a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna discovered that senior engineers from Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power, which runs the reactor, had neglected the safety problems for more than a month after the loss of power. In June, after a safety check, the IAEA gave the green light for Kori-1 to resume operation. Korea's Nuclear Safety and Security Commission (NSSC) approved the restart on 4 July, but activists and local residents remain strongly opposed to restarting the reactor. At first, the Korean Ministry of Knowledge Economy, which oversees energy policy, had said that the restart would be delayed to alleviate anxiety. But the government changed its mind as a result of a nationwide heatwave that has put a strain on the country's electricity supply in recent days."
The needs of the few (Score:3, Insightful)
Would Koreans agree to pay more for, and use less, electricity as a whole so this reactor can remain offline?
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With a title like that, more like:
The Koreans run into the reactor room, get hit with radiation, heroically pull out the uranium rod and replace it with a new one, while Kirk watches behind the glass in horror, and say to him "The needs of the few... i have always been... and shall be... your friend"
Re:The needs of the few (Score:5, Informative)
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Also, Oyster Creek is substantially the same GE design of plant as Fukushima Daiichi. I have a close family member who worked at OC several years, and the two plants would routinely send teams to each other to compare notes...
For comparison, America's oldesr operational reactor Oyster Creek in NJ is 9 years older than this one
Re:The needs of the few (Score:5, Informative)
I understand what you're saying, but you are very much scaremongering here.
The differences are:
o The US reactor is not on in a tsunami zone.
o The US reactor is geologically stable.
o The US reactor's batteries are above sea level.
o The US reactor's generator is above sea level.
o The US reactor has at least three generators, shared between several other reactors, available on call.
o The IAEA repeatedly gave bad marks to the Japanese reactor, for all of the elements which failed. They have given good marks to the US reactor.
Basically, while it certainly is a reactor to keep our eye on simply because of its age, it has none of the risks which directly and/or indirectly initiated and exacerbated the situation in Japan. Basically they are the same design but the US reactor not only has none of the same risks, all of the known risks have been intelligently mitigated. Whereas in Japan, they were literally ignored.
As such, a comparison without providing such details only serves to spread Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt and scaremonger without any rational justification whatsoever.
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Well, as with Spanish inquisition, accidents are seldom expected. That's why they are called accidents.
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Nobody's expecting an accident involving a paperclip puncturing a hole between universes causing a matter-antimater reaction that destroys all reality either, therefore we must devote 100% of our resources to preventing it, because like the Spanish Inquisition accidents are seldom expected. That's why they are called accidents.
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You seem to expect it, making your point very much moot.
My point was that people say "no such kind of accident/circumstances can ever happen here" and think "no kind of accident/circumstances can ever happen here". Denial is not just a river in Egypt.
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Much like you seem to expect nuclear disaster?
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So what, if it melted down it would be a great way to get rid of the n. koreans. I happily advocate nuclear power for my enemies.
And you would happily destroy your friends ( south Korea ) to also destroy your perceived enemies ( north Korea. ) ?
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Even better is how he thinks that every innocent person in North Korea should die just because their leaders are douches. If that were true, we should have nuked the US when Dubya was in power.
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Um, Busan (or Pusan...spelled either way) is in South Korea, not the north, and about as far away from the north as it could be.
"Activists" eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
These things are always well-spun, from either side. For "strong opposition from local residents and activists" read "strong opposition from activists and the local residents they've frightened out of their wits."
Activists *exist* to provide strong opposition to things. You never see something happening "despite luke-warm opposition from activists." The volume of their opposition does not make them right.
Re:"Activists" eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
This has to be the biggest straw man ever seen on Slashdot. Every debate about anything nuclear related always gets dragged back to the foaming-at-the-mouth screaming fear-mongering lunatic anti-nuclear extremists.
I agree that the volume of their opposition does not make them right, but your attack of them (or rather a straw man version of them) doesn't make you right either. Debate the actual points being made.
I actually joined some anti-nuclear protesters in Tokyo. They were noisy but clam and rational. They set up a family area away from the shouting for people with children and the elderly to join in. They made some good points. Care to debate them?
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OK,
The point is that they had a minor glitch, no one was hurt and nothing was damaged.
They figured out what happened, fixed it, and now are going to restart it.
What is the debate? There is no debate other than "activists" don't want it restarted because of their irrational fear of nuclear power.
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The problem wasn't the minor glitch, it was the engineers that ignored the safety problems after the glitch. The only thing that gives me second thoughts about nuclear power is the human element. People cutting corners or not doing their jobs properly are the most dangerous part of nuclear power.
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Evidently, since the safety problems have been identified and the facility has passed safety inspections, then the "glitch" was fixed.
So what was the debate again?
And if you are at all involved in software, you know better than to put all your trust in it.
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Evidently, since the safety problems have been identified and the facility has passed safety inspections, then the "glitch" was fixed.
So what was the debate again?
Based on the article it's not clear that the defective senior engineers who hid and ignored (i.e. did not fix) the problem have been replaced. As long as that's the case the reactor safety is still compromised: the human component is the weakest link in the security chain (it's the cause of Three Miles Island, Chernobyl and Fuckushima).
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Actually, they could not have made good points as those do not exist (aside from human ignorance and greed - on both sides of the nuclear "debate").
There is no alternative to nuclear power - no one cared enough to get fusion going. 50% nuclear power is probably minimum required such that renewables can bring in the rest. Aside from nuclear, there is no other non-fossil fuel baseload power source that can replace fossil fuels. And fossil fuels are by far more dangerous. We just can't see it, like a deer caug
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All clam and rational, eh? Well, well.
sycodon largely beat me to it, I think. There is no reason given *not* to restart the thing *except* the opposition of activists (and, of course, local residents). I think I engaged with that point pretty well.
There was a failure. It caused no damage, no dangerous situation, no injury, no death, no environmental damage. It has been safely generating power for many years. It was shut down as a precaution. They've since found there is no reason not to restart it.
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High Five *
I'll let you go first next time. Then we can tag team these bitches.
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>>They set up a family area away from the shouting for people with children and the elderly to join in. They made some good points. Care to debate them?
I bet the elderly were just there because they couldn't run their AC due to the nuclear plant shutdowns. :p
Nuclear activists are generally a few batteries short of a full charge anyway.
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Can't decide if you are deliberately misrepresenting the anti-nuclear movement or just thick.
Point: we should have new, safe nuclear reactors instead of the ancient designs.
Anti-nuclear Counterpoint: No, absolutely not. We need no nuclear power whatsoever.
Wrong. Try: Newer designs may be safer but still don't address many of the problems that have caused problems in the past. They are not certified for very strong earthquakes beyond magnitude 7.5. The same crooks who run the current ones and failed to secure them will be in charge. They are too expensive. As for thorium reactors they are at least a decade and tens of billions of dollars away.
And most importantly of a
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I"m not even going to bother give a point by point refutation.
You just agreed with every Anti-nuclear Counterpoint and you don't even understand that you did.
Re:"Activists" eh? (Score:5, Funny)
Despite all the buzz they just have a hive mind.
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Had to restart because there (Score:5, Insightful)
They had to restart because there is a need for more electricity. I wish people started to realize this when they block new generators.
They are safer, and you aren't exactly going to consume a lot less, are you? Thus either you are forcing us to hold older plants open for a lot longer than intended, or you allow us to make a new and better plant.
By stopping new ones from being made, you are only making it more dangerous for everybody.
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They had to restart because there is a need for more electricity. I wish people started to realize this when they block new generators. They are safer, and you aren't exactly going to consume a lot less, are you? Thus either you are forcing us to hold older plants open for a lot longer than intended, or you allow us to make a new and better plant.
By stopping new ones from being made, you are only making it more dangerous for everybody
I know this will likely be modded down, but screw it. It's the truth.
Well, get ready for blackouts and brownouts across the whole US, as the Obama administration is forcing coal-fired generator plants to shut down by drastically increasing regulation-compliance costs. This year, 57 plants will be shut down with nothing to replace the lost capacity. That's 8.5% of total US power generation capacity! Summers and winters are going to be increasingly-lethal seasons for the poor and working-poor.
Meanwhile, deman
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And not a single link to back up your claims. Obama has expanded gun rights since going in to office. Looking through your post history, every single one of them are frantic pro-gun, pro-military posts. Maybe you should go outside once in a while.
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"And not a single link to back up your claims. "
Right Back At Ya
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And not a single link to back up your claims.
http://peakoil.com/publicpolicy/record-number-of-coal-fired-generators-to-be-shut-down-in-2012/ [peakoil.com]
http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/res_agenda21_00.shtml [un.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_21 [wikipedia.org]
Apologies for not including links. I know that doing a simple Google search is beyond many people's intellectual capabilities thanks to teacher's unions' grip on US schools.
Obama has expanded gun rights since going in to office.
Now that's just a bad joke.
Strat
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I've been trying to stay out of politics lately, but my ethics and concern for my country require me to reply to your posts.
In the last decade or so (after 9/11, not coincidentally) there has been a rash of cult-like right-wing nationalism and tribal "us versus them". It existed prior to this millennium, but it's been getting worse, and more concerning. The rhetoric is, in my opinion, becoming dangerous and increasingly ridiculous, and if not checked, may lead to severe consequences for our nation and the
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I've been trying to stay out of politics lately, but my ethics and concern for my country require me to reply to your posts.
In the last decade or so (after 9/11, not coincidentally) there has been a rash of cult-like right-wing nationalism and tribal "us versus them". It existed prior to this millennium, but it's been getting worse, and more concerning. The rhetoric is, in my opinion, becoming dangerous and increasingly ridiculous, and if not checked, may lead to severe consequences for our nation and the world.
You can't reason with a cult member, and likewise, with an ultra-nationalist or conspiracy theorist. The best you can hope for is that a method of cult recovery "deprogramming" comes along, or that a significant shift in the dialog marginalizes the cult.
Still, even though you won't, I encourage you (and anyone reading this who thinks as you do) to step back, get a look at the big picture, and try making friends with some people outside your echo chamber, before your rantings move any further from merely extreme into the "bat-guano insane" category. Sorry for being so blunt, but this is what conservatives would call "tough love".
For the record:
Obama is not a socialist communist fascist Muslim Brotherhood member of the Trilateral U.N. Knights Templar.
Progressives/Liberals are not your enemy, nor are they the enemy of the state. They merely favor a different approach than you do for government's role in society. They do NOT believe any less than you do in freedom or democracy. Deal with it.
When teachers make as much as military contractors or wall street traders, you can talk to me about teacher's unions. Until then, no dice.
Despite your signature's attempt to demean the concept, some ideas ARE so good they need to be mandatory. I'm sure you've heard that absolute freedom destroys freedom (it's true). Your freedom to pollute the air must knuckle to my freedom to breathe clean air, and so on.
Really, my friend, come down out of the trees. And ask some of your friends to turn off the hate mongers on the TV and radio, and come down out of the trees with you. Please do it soon, so we can avoid the less pleasant consequences that are coming if this radical polarization and crazy fear mongering continues. You don't need lots of guns and ammo. You need balance.
Your characterizations and ad hominems show extreme condescension, arrogance, and intellectual elitism, not to mention a huge dose of hubris and disregard for truth, intellectual honesty, and reality. Attitudes and beliefs such as yours are a huge part of the problem the US is in.
It's obvious we are at polar opposites and will never agree, therefor I must strive to expose those kinds of beliefs and the ideology that drives them for the shams that they are and defeat them in the public arena wherever and whe
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The UN boogeyman is just that..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_21 [wikipedia.org]
http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/res_agenda21_00.shtml [un.org]
You were saying?
Look, I know it makes people uncomfortable, and that it's easy to allow normalcy bias to convince you to dismiss it out of hand, but that doesn't mean it's not happening. It's being implemented at the local level in many hundreds of towns and cities across the US.
Strat
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Buy guns. Lots and lots of guns. Hide caches of guns and ammo in multiple locations along with reloading equipment and supplies. Better do it quick while it's still possible.
You will NEVER have as many guns as the government.
Plus they've got tanks and stuff. And Apache helicopters. People aren't worried about how many ammo caches you've got when they've got Apache helicopters.
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You will NEVER have as many guns as the government.
Fortunately, the military is made up of US citizens, a large fraction of which will not comply with orders to fire on US citizens or confiscate weapons, round up people into camps, etc. They understand that their oath to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, includes political leaders.
http://oathkeepers.org/oath/ [oathkeepers.org]
Strat
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I guess you never heard of Stanley Milgram and his little experiment.
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I guess you never checked the Oathkeepers link I provided, ignoring that which doesn't fit your preconceived notions.
Good work.
Strat
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I did. It is easy to be an internet tough guy. But when push comes to shove, things can change very quickly. Especially when the one who gives orders is "one of their team" and the victims-to-be are branded as "unpatriotic traitor commies". So, get real, dude. I've seen many people breaking whatever oaths they made. The loudest and most patriotic ones were the first to break them. Not preconceived notions, just some experience you are lacking.
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Parent comment is not interesting, is insane. We have witnessed hundreds of times that the UN is absolutely unable to twist even a little tiny bit USA's arm, even when doing so would be in USA middle long term self interest.
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Parent comment is not interesting, is insane. We have witnessed hundreds of times that the UN is absolutely unable to twist even a little tiny bit USA's arm, even when doing so would be in USA middle long term self interest.
Except for the *fact* that Agenda 21 "sustainable development" programs are currently being implemented in cities and towns across the US, along with destruction of private property rights and personal gun ownership rights
The difference between this and other UN programs and initiatives being that US Liberal/Progressives are on-board politically & ideologically with Agenda 21, as their goals are mostly the same.
Strat
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So forget about the CO2, you know how much other garbage coal plants spew?
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Well, what is the cost of the CO2 they emit?
There is something far more important at stake, political reputations! The failure of solar power companies associated with Obama's administration has been a terrible black eye, and no cost (borne by others) is too high to make solar a more attractive alternative. We, no cost short of giving individuals the same tax breaks utilities enjoy. We can't get too crazy...
There is a political effort to throw a cloud over our non wind/solar energy alternatives, to make it seem that the 'other guy' has problems too.
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Don't be so sure. The problem with externalities is that they generally cannot be fully accounted for. Externalities from dirty coal plants includes damage to our food supply (they are why women are advised not to eat too much fish due to mercury), extra health care costs for lung and heart disease, more rapid breakdown of rubber products, increased maintenance on buildings and on and on and on.
That still doesn't even touch on things like several towns and square miles of Pennsylvania rendered uninhabitable
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The problem with externalities is that they generally cannot be fully accounted for.
So vastly overcharge for an externality because you can't get more than one or two significant digits in? Doesn't make sense to me. As I said before, I agree that there are externalities, but I think businesses which generate them should pay for the externality, not a punitive additional cost which is unrelated to the size of the externality.
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And I was pointing out that the legitimate cost of the externalities in this case is likely more than you think.
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As to that, I see no evidence that there is an externality that needs paying for. "Increasingly severe storms" is an empty accusation since there's no evidence that global warming result
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As to that, I see no evidence that there is an externality that needs paying for. "Increasingly severe storms" is an empty accusation since there's no evidence that global warming results in such.
There is little disagreement that dumping heat into the heat engine that is our atmosphere can only result in more 'vigorous' behavior.
As for numbers, I haven't seen any on either side. Frankly I'm not sure we know how to figure some of those costs other than BIG until we look in retrospect (that is, wait till too late).
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There is little disagreement that dumping heat into the heat engine that is our atmosphere can only result in more 'vigorous' behavior.
Without evidence, it doesn't matter if there's truly was "little" disagreement.
It's worth remembering here that various societies are now deliberately building in harm's way. Even without an increase in severe storms we will see more costly storms more frequently just due to increased and more expensive construction along coasts and riverways. The US i suffering a classic example of this, driven by remarkably short sighted (and cheap) public flood insurance policy.
The problem as I see it, is that AGW
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There is also "little" disagreement that a person will suffer a downturn in their health if a freight train runs them over. Need proof?
Little disagreement means that most scientists are satisfied with the evidence at hand. In this case, sufficiently satisfied that it is an assumption in weather modeling including that done by the insurance industry to estimate risk for the year.
AGW harm is an escalating recurring cost while remediation is a flat fee.
I don't advise that we just throw the switch and shut down
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There is also "little" disagreement that a person will suffer a downturn in their health if a freight train runs them over. Need proof?
I have proof of that. People get run over quite regularly with freight trains and die, get mangled, etc. Not so for your claim. What is the point of asserting things without proof? Let's look at the original claim once again:
There is little disagreement that dumping heat into the heat engine that is our atmosphere can only result in more 'vigorous' behavior.
First, this little assertion has caused a pretty large schism in climatology. In particular, it has led to the "defection", if you will, of Judith Curry. She did some of the earliest research studying AGW's effect on extreme weather. When her research was misused by a coworker to make t
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You conveniently skipped over the part about the correlation between thermal energy available and severity of weather being in wide use in all hurricane models. Without exception, hurricanes that move over cooler water lose strength and when they move over warmer water they intensify again. When they move over land which has a lot less thermal mass than water, they die out. This happens EVERY SINGLE TIME.
I wouldn't describe Curry as a 'defector'. She is simply calling for more rigor and transparency in the
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You conveniently skipped over the part about the correlation between thermal energy available and severity of weather being in wide use in all hurricane models.
I notice you use the word, "models". Think about that a bit.
Without exception, hurricanes that move over cooler water lose strength and when they move over warmer water they intensify again.
Two things to note here. First, there are exceptions contrary to your assertion. The hurricane can strengthen or weaken due to structural issues (for example, the circulation pattern can be disrupted to an extent, weakening the storm) and moisture content of the storm (dry air can be pulled in, for example, weakening the storm). Second, warmer and cooler water doesn't correlate with slight changes in global mean temperature.
I wouldn't describe Curry as a 'defector'. She is simply calling for more rigor and transparency in the process (I certainly can't fault that).
As I noted, she defected
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You are clutching at straws. You know very well that a model represents our best understanding of the world and that everything we know is a model.
If you insist only on things we have god-like knowledge of from outside the system, then provably we know nothing at all, we can't even prove to that degree that the sun will rise tomorrow or, indeed, won't turn into a bowl of petunias by the time you read this.
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You are clutching at straws. You know very well that a model represents our best understanding of the world and that everything we know is a model.
And by virtual of being a model rather than reality, it can be wrong. I shouldn't have to tell you this. Models of hurricanes aren't near perfect. There is a lot of room for error.
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Everything you think is reality is just a model and could be wrong. Even your gender identity and status as a corporeal being is merely a model that could be wrong.
If that's your threshold, I'm going to have to ask you to OBJECTIVELY prove your existence to me before we can continue. Until then, you're just a model.
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The government should implement regulations on coal fired plants because they emit a lot of CO2 and pollution for which they don't compensate society.
So, who will "compensate society" for the loss of generation capacity, nationwide brownouts/blackouts, and skyrocketing electricity prices that will affect the poorest the most, and for the additional deaths from freezing/heat among those on disability with fixed incomes, and the poor and working-poor? Or do you expect them to grow wings and migrate each season like birds?
Strat
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That's why it is foolish to shut down coal plants without simultaneously encouraging nuclear and solar thermal.
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That's why it is foolish to shut down coal plants without simultaneously encouraging nuclear and solar thermal.
That's the point...the coal plants are being shut down with nothing to take up the slack except ideas that are barely beyond the experimental stage, and non-existent nuke plants that will take decades to be approved, battles with the NIMBY crowd and environmental/no-nukes activists to be won, and finally construction to be completed.
That doesn't prevent people from freezing to death in winter or dying from heat prostration in summer in the meantime. Never mind the economic cost of businesses closing, never
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Sad to see your post descend into paranoid ranting after such a strong start. How the hell did this get +5:Interesting?
"Normalcy bias", much?
Or is it simple blind ideological/political fervor?
Do the UN's own documents you can read right now on the web and our own government's documents outlining a plethora of Federal programs for locally implementing the UN's "sustainable development" and other parts of Agenda 21 in US cities & towns, etc, lie?
It's likely the US city, town, or community you're in (assuming you're American) right now has on their official website links to pages with their plans for compliance with "susta
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I don't want to stop new power plants being made, I just want them to be non-nuclear. Instead of spending billions on a new nuclear plant and then billions cleaning up after it why not just build something cleaner and cheaper? Oh, that's right, it won't generate as much profit for friends of the people in charge...
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Oh, that's right, it won't generate as much power, because no current technology comes close
Fixed that for you
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Are you stupid? Exactly what technology is available which is "cleaner and cheaper" than nuclear?
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I wish people started to realize this when they block new generators.
You're all mixed up.
I WANT new reactors, I think they're a good thing. I just don't want them anywhere near my house, that's all.
Re:Had to restart because there (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Had to restart because there (Score:4, Insightful)
If we are going to truly have an increase in your standard of living we need more power plants and better technology. The "green" movement wants us to take away centuries of progress and live worse just because they think it's "better".
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How does adding extra insulation to your house reduce your standard of living?
Oh, right. It's less money for luxuries...I think I'm beginning to understand.
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Two problems: 1) extra insulation is only going to do so much to reduce energy consumption. Sure, you might reduce consumption 10-20% in some older buildings, but that's not going to make a giant difference in the overall power consumption.
2) If you make peoples' houses more efficient, many of them will simply crank up the A/C even more, so they end up using the same amount of power as before.
And finally, even if #2 didn't happen, the population is constantly increasing, so energy usage is going to increas
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Rubbish, we want to make things better by reducing the pollution and other negative effects of high levels of energy wastage.
Modern devices are more energy efficient than older ones, and are also better. First we burned stuff for light, including gas. Then we invented electric lightbulbs which were safer and more efficient. Then we invented energy saving bulbs and finally LED lighting. Each of these things improved on the previous generation without reducing quality of life, and in fact improved the general
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And when it comes down to cars, unless you go cross country frequently it makes zero economic sense to trade in your car thats already paid for that gets 10 MPG to spend $25,000 on a new car that gets 25 MPG.
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I much prefer CCFL and newer LED lighting to the old incandescents. They light they produce is a much nicer tone and softer.
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That's not to say it will happen now if we institute an energy conservation program (there are exceptions to almost every rule), but historically that's what's happened most of the time. If a conservation measure truly results in energy savings (i.e. it's mo
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Americans are fat
What's that got to do with anything?
High efficiency standards(whether legislated for, or voluntarily adopted by a better educated populace) would help mitigate a lot of the harm, but the simple fact is population growth shits all over any efficiency gains. By far the simplest and most effective way to combat environmental disruption is to reduce the population. Perhaps some kind of incentive - like if you get to 60 and have had 2 or less kids, you get a free pension or something.
The optimal solution is to
Re:Had to restart because there (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, we have reached the plateau of the peak oil since 2007 (production stopped to increase and prices skyrocketed). THIS is the challenge we will have to face in the two next decades. Electrical vehicles will be needed. Not just personal cars, but also trucks, construction vehicles (my bet is that most will be wired), agricultural vehicles, possibly planes. That will take a lot more than the mere 25% we could save for a budget that would exceed the construction of 25% supplemental production capabilities.
The best governmental strategy right now is
- save the energy that can be saved cheaply or even for free (~5-10%, actually probably less in well managed countries)
- build lots of nuclear plants NOW that oil and energy to build them is cheap (compared to fuel costs in 10 years). Make them modern, make them safe. Make it possible that they use plutonium : it is a fuel that is basically free, foreign countries without the tech will even pay you to take care of their.
- invest a lot in research. Make a courageous choice : do you believe in solar energy or fusion power? Choose one and invest massively. And remember : if a trillion dollars could give you Iraq's oil reserves, the result of these projects can give you a durable amount of energy that is far greater. Investment should be of a comparable scale.
- if you live in US : do not shut down tokamaks. This is one of the dumbest long-term move. Realize this : in 20 years, there will be fusion power. The first to have it will either build plants for the whole world or even sell electricity directly. And China wants that badly.
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This sounds like crap. What we need to do is reduce the need for energy. We need to look at the times in which we are running out of power and figure out how we can reduce consumption of power during these times. This might be as simple are upgrading air conditioning units to newer more efficient models in more places, shutting off air conditioning in largely unoccupied buildings (such as office buildings during the night and houses during the day), not utilising washers, dryers, and other energy demanding appliances, etc.
I'm sorry but that will lead to a increased consumption !, (Google Jevons effect). The only way to combat Jeevons effect is by increasing taxes on energy.
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That is not the strategy at all. The strategy is "10 years from now, I'll have moved on from my position here as CEO of XYZ Energy Co., so what do I care about investing in infrastructure? I want a bigger bonus!"
Safety? (Score:2)
... it was revealed that the reactor and its emergency generator had temporarily lost power ...
So does this actually pose a safety risk? I thought that all modern reactors were protected by passive safety mechanisms (i.e., not requiring external power).
Re:Safety? (Score:5, Informative)
... thought that all modern reactors were protected by passive safety mechanisms ...
Kori-1 is a PWR from 1978 and like most reactors currently in service, it is a generation II design. These have many passive safety features, but they are generally not fully passively safe.
Some Gen-III reactors (1990s tech) and most Gen-III+ reactors (2000s tech) have full passive safety, in addition to many other safety improvements like simplified designs, better containment, better redundancy, etc. Gen-IV designs (future) step it up to inherent safety - for example pebble beds (meltdown is impossible because thermal expansion stops the reaction even if all cooling strategies fail) or my favorite, the LFTR [wikipedia.org] (liquid fuel - you can't melt down when you're already melted, and thermal runaway just drains it into a basin in a noncritical configuration; and it's an unpressurized design, which eliminates tons of problems).
So does this actually pose a safety risk?
Yes - like everything worth doing in life, there is always risk. In this case the risk is that the reactor requires water to be actively pumped for a while after shutdown. The risk is generally acceptable: a failure like the one that happened a few months back doesn't cause a sudden catastrophic failure. There is considerable thermal mass in the water inside the reactor so the temperature rise is gradual. In event of a failure you have days to get some power back online. In the case of the failure a few months back, the power was back within minutes and there was little chance that they wouldn't be able to manage it in time. The incident wasn't an acute safety risk; but it was a failure that shouldn't have happened in the first place, so it's somewhat worrying.
The problem is if you have a disaster like the Japan earthquake: if the power is knocked out and all your infrastructure is too crippled to fix the grid or truck in some generators; then things go sideways. These are low frequency events, but they happen, which is why in my opinion we need to start building modern reactors so we can decommission these old Gen-II relics.
Re:Safety? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, the Gen III+ is Soviet 1980ies tech, but don't let Westinghouse hear that. The Soviet Union published its AES-88 design in 1988 and handed it over for review in Germany - after Chernobyl, this was called for. The AES-88 is a passive design and predates the AP-600 by 10 years. There were several other designs as well all designed until about the time of the break-up of the Soviet Union. (After this some 2-3 million people starved/froze to death or otherwise perished in the worst economic crisis the world has never heard of. Life expectancy in Russia dropped to levels not seen since a certain Josef Stalin. In short: They had other problems.)
More designs followed much later. The latest being the AES-2006. Which adds a core catcher and is more economical than the AES-88, without sacrifying the passive safety, as it was in the AES-92. The AES-92 had a large pool of cooling water to provide emergency cooling without electricity for 12 hours or so, but no heat removal systems to recondense and recycle the cooling water. AFAIK those that have been build were refitted since, but I might be wrong. The AES-2006 also has hydrogen catalyzers by design, I'm not sure if this was the case in the older ones.
(Please note: Russian designes distinguish between the reactor/power system and the power plant design as a whole. The AES-2006 design is implemented in all of the VVER-1200 power stations, for example.)
Better still are the breeder reactors, which are fully passive by design. The BN-600 is still operating, three BN-800 are under construction, two in China, one in Russia. The main problem is, of course, the flamable coolant (sodium). A lead cooled commercial reactor is supposed to be finished in 2017.
To make a long story short: If you're looking for the latest in nuclear power, look at Russia. (And yes, this came as a surprise to me as well.)
Re: (Score:2)
for example pebble beds (meltdown is impossible because thermal expansion stops the reaction even if all cooling strategies fail)
Weren't those the ones that had all kinds of problems with the pebbles breaking down due to hot spots and poor thermal control, contaminating the reactor with radioactive particles that made it hard to decommission and that potentially leaked into the atmosphere in case of failure?
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Yes. They solved the meltdown problem but created a bunch of different problems, which is why this is a potential future technology instead of a current one. It was just an example of inherent safety. These problems are just some of the reasons that I think LFTR is a better technology to pursue, though LFTR also needs a ton of engineering before it will be ready.
For the love of God (Score:4, Funny)
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Actually Godzilla was created by US undersea nuclear testing. The original movie (the Japanese version, the English dub was substantially re-written) was a reaction to the horrors of the atomic bombings and the continued stockpiling of weapons by the USSR and US. Back then atomic annihilation of the entire world was a real possibility, and Godzilla was the embodiment of that.
this year... (Score:1)
The problem of nuclear power (Score:2)
It's the people who run it... most often the people who run it without consideration of safe operation.
Just as in the case of the BP oil spill and of the Fukushima, the common thread is someone refusing to spend the money on safety. Had they done so, neither one of those would be a topic for discussion.
Blame needs to be laid squarely on those decision makers and not on the rather successful and viable technology of nuclear energy. Nuclear works. It can, and mostly is, done safely.
Worse, though, is the al
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Activists FOR better safety systems would be new (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, this is pie-in-the-sky thinking. But imagine what would happen if activists would not protest *against* the restart because of safety problems, but *for* better safety systems before the reactor is to be restarted.
They might actually end up doing something good for a change. Of course, this would require a much more cerebral process than a pavlovian reflex. You would actually have to understand what happened and understand what needs to be done about it. Finally, you'd need to protest for some specific activity - not just against a very general one - which is certainly not going to be a nice catchy phrase.
This case calls for a thorough investigation of the generator failure and review of all generators. Perhaps (actually quite likely) the addition of more emergency generators to provide for redundancy and finally the investigation of all similar reactors. (Although Kori-1 seems to be unique in Korea, while the other reactors in Kori are more advanced Westinghouse designs. So this may or may not limit the applicability.)
Obviously, not a nice catchy phrase, but much more useful.
Re: (Score:3)
But imagine what would happen if activists would not protest *against* the restart because of safety problems, but *for* better safety systems before the reactor is to be restarted.
That is one of the things that people in Japan have been asking for. The problem is that to be really safe the bar has to be set so high that no reactor would pass it. For example the 11/3 quake was a magnitude 9, and most Japanese reactors are only certified to magnitude 7.3. If the epicentre were close to one of them it would not be certified to survive it without the reactor cracking, the control rod mechanism failing or the cooling system being damaged and so forth.
Japan is mostly earthquake proof, but
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Are you worried, right now, that a stone or other heavy item will drop on your head from 50m height? No? That's probably because there is nothing to suggest that such an item is anywhere 50m above your head.
If I go to a place a bit of a way down the road, there may actually be that possibility, but not here. Hence, I don't need to worry about this. It's the same with the earthquake. A mag 9 earthquake cannot happen in Japan for tectonic reasons.The mechanism depends on having a subduction zone in the immedi
Heat wave (Score:2)
Obligatory Starcraft joke (Score:1)
Why don't they just construct additional pylons?
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Whose fault? (Score:2)
Maybe if we didn't have so many anti-anything nuclear protesters we would have new, safer ones and these things would have been torn down years ago.
From TFA : (Score:2)
A consensus on the reactor from local residents? That would never happen.
Just another bargaining chip. (Score:2)