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Re: News Advisory: Still Crazy After Oil These Years!
We're beating a dead horse with this thread....And it doesn't even
relate to several of the groups that it is posted to in the newsgroups.
If you have a response to a comment in this thread, take it to the
individual and not the newsgroup.
Patrick Reid wrote:
>
> David Beorn <dbeorn@freenet.vcu.edu> wrote in article
> <Pine.ULT.3.91.960725132735.7930C-100000@freenet.vcu.edu>...
> > On Thu, 25 Jul 1996, Robert Smallwood wrote:
> >
> > > From: Robert Smallwood <gbg1026@InfoNET.st-johns.nf.ca>
> > > : And by the way, for those of you who might point to Chernobyl or TMI,
>
> > > : these were HUMAN mistakes and TOTALLY preventable. They KNEW what
> they
> > >
> > > Who is in the nuclear industry if not humans?
> >
> > Well, as long as the humans don't bypass the safeties that were designed
> > to prevent things such as Chernobyl, it won't happen.
>
> Hold on...
>
> Human error will happen in the nuclear industry, as in all inductries. If
> people continue to build nuke plants, nuclear accidents will happen.
>
> However, let's examine what that means. There are 442 nuclear reactors
> (>500 MWe) in the world. The lifetime production of electrical energy by
> these reactors up until August 1995 is in excess of 25,500 TWh. These
> figures are from the Nuclear Engineering International 1996 Industry
> Handbook. If we assume an average power reactor capacity of 900 MWe and an
> average capacity factor of 80%, that is 286.1 reactor-years of operation.
>
> The worst nuclear accident which has occurred as a result of the world-wide
> nuclear program is the Chernobyl accident. The total number of deaths
> attributable to this accident as of November, 1995, is approximately 50.
> This includes those people who died of acute radiation exposure during the
> accident (and the two who died during the accident due to non-radiation
> related causes), the three children which had died of thyroid cancer (the
> _only_ radiation induced health effect which has been found to have
> affected any members of the general public), and all of the cancer deaths
> in the "liquidator" population, even though the cancer rate in this
> population is _not_ in excess of the expected rate.
>
> In view of the fact that, in a coal mine accident a few years ago (not, by
> any means the worst ever) which occurred in Nova Scotia, Canada, 26 people
> died, and considering how many times such deaths are multplied throughout
> the world due to fossil fuel use, I think that nuclear is the safest power
> source which mankind has ever implemented.
>
> Don't forget to include all of the people affected by fly-ash and
> emmissions from coal plants. Don't forget the impact of CO2 emmissions on
> the global environment, which has led to speculation that some of the freak
> weather in the past year may have been affected by human-induced climate
> change. Don't forget that, in Canada, the total amount of spent nuclear
> fuel (which has generated over 1250 TWh) could be comfortably stored in two
> Olympic-sized swimming pools, and that, if that electricity had been
> generated by coal, it would have resulted in the emmission of nearly one
> billion tonnes of CO2, 80 million tonnes of ash (which would have required
> 50,000 swimming pools to store it, if we did that instead of just dumping
> it into the ecosystem) and 32 million tonnes of SO2.
>
> Nuclear power is the safest, most environmentally sound power source yet
> developed by mankind which is currently capable of providing a large
> fraction of the electrical power needs of the world. Avoidance of nuclear
> power because of fears of radiation which are unfounded only harms our
> planet and our economies.
>
> Patrick Reid
> pjreid@mi.net
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