Posts by BenWilson
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Field Theory: Japan moves, in reply to Ross Mason,
Wanna know where the hydrogen explosion comes from.
Yup, the hydrogen comes from the water used as coolant, reacting with zirconium. But Karl Grossman has not suggested a better alternative, and there's a good reason they use water, it doesn't get activated by the radiation, so it can be vented.
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Kumara Republic,
True, although I don't know if this will continue to be the case. NZ is going to grow. Who knows how much demand there will be for power in the future? But in the short (like 10-20 years) term, I can't see it.
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Former policeman Shields, as is clear in this New Zealand Herald video, is a man who loves his work:
Yes, his claim that people feel too scared to go out because of graffiti is probably true, but it does rather say to me that said people should harden the fuck up.
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so much that we really shouldn't generate usable energy any other way.
Well, electricity anyway. If we discovered easily accessible offshore oil, we'd be crazy not to take it. And biofuel might be profitable at some point if we could get away from our obsessions relating to genetic engineering.
I'm not against various other electric energy generation ideas though, I wouldn't rule out solar farming, tidal power. Also solar power can and should be used directly as heat where it can. Not to mention that it's one of the primary inputs to farming.
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Matthew Poole,
That's like saying that someone drowning in a hydro dam is a power generation accident.
I would say that, if it happened. And I wouldn't see it as sufficient reason to not have hydro, although they should probably look at ways to prevent the same accident happening again.
It wouldn't need to be as big as Chernobyl for that to happen. Scotland is a hell of a lot further away from Chernobyl than Bluff is from Cape Reinga.
Scotland is not uninhabitable. It produces a lot of food. You have massively overprojected the destruction that the Chernobyl accident wreaked.
And this has been tested? No, didn't think so.
As far as I know, yes, it's been tested. They know how hot it gets in a melting core, and they make and test the containment to that.
Theory is great, in theory.
It's not just theory. There are a lot of existing nuclear reactors, this technology has been around for a long time, has been tested for a long time, has improved all through that time. Every step along the way with the theory they do tests and experiments over and over again with massive amounts of care and attention.
In practice, we haven't got a snowball's chance in hell of predicting and controlling all the possible ways that Mother Nature can fuck with our best-laid plans.
No, but we can predict the likely ones. In the end our entire planet could be wiped out by a large asteroid, sure, but I'm not wasting much time worrying about it. I'm definitely not going to worry about whether nuclear plants might be ruptured in that event.
What's happened in Japan has been a real testament to the modern design of nuclear plants, in fact. There has been no dangerous leak, despite the fact that it was hit by massive earthquake AND a massive tsunami. However, the tsunami itself has had a catastrophic death toll. That's been a considerably more important factor in disaster planning than any worrying about the nuclear plant.
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Yes, there are. NZ has been quite fortunate in having had none of significance.
Well, we had a pretty bad one last year in the extraction of coal, most of which is for power plants, I presume.
An accident at a nuclear plant at one end of NZ, with the wind blowing the fallout along the country, could render nearly the entire nation uninhabitable.
Yes, if a very poorly designed plant had the biggest nuclear disaster in human history, and the wind conditions were exactly right, that could happen. And I would be opposed to the construction of such a plant.
Chernobyl was a long time ago, and the technology has improved massively since then, and they were well behind anyway, the Soviet Union virtually bankrupt and totally deaf to the objections of the populace and quite possibly the scientists setting the plant up.
The way they're designed now, they could actually have a core meltdown, and not release harmful levels of radiation. The plant would be fucked, is all.
But we don't need it, so the whole thing is moot. We get enough rain and wind. Personally, I'd like to see more wind power, it's something that can be done in small increments, and it couples nicely with hydro, because the excess generation that wind produces at times can be stored by pumping water back into the dams.
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Rich Lock,
What if the wind happens to be blowing in the wrong direction?
Then there would be fallout, and bad consequences. It's not 100% safe, of course. But you do need to compare it to other power generation sources over the years to really see how important that is. There are disaster cases in most power generation sources.
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Hard News: About Arie, in reply to Russell Brown,
I'm stoked things are improving, Russell, and glad to have helped.
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Finally. Anyone for Nuclear power in Aotearoa??? We would have ended up the long white shroud after an event like that.
I'm not against them on principle. If they're on the East Coast, even if there was a leak, the likely fallout is going to be heading out across thousands of miles of Pacific Ocean.
Also, as in Japan, the nuke plant is the least of their worries, really. In fact, I think being downhill from a hydro dam could be more devastating.
All the more so when NZ has no real need for nuclear power, in the presence of ample opportunity for hydro, tidal, wind and geothermal generation.
More to the point.
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Isabel Hitchings,
Steven The number of things which I disapprove of in general life that have been godsends in the current circumstances is mind-boggling and a little humbling - from paper plates to federated farmers!
Word. Life isn't meant to be a survival situation. But when it is, you're seldom too concerned about the greater impact of something that is saving your life. I don't generally much admire SUVs in cities, but I imagine they're currently gold down there.
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