NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/sci/environm/13971

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-29 | 1.8 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!noc.near.net!nic.umass.edu!dime!chelm.cs.umass.edu!yodaiken
From: [e-mail] (victor yodaiken)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: Why do they hate us?
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 29 Dec 92 12:32:25 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Lines: 32

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>=    Nice try, but the *design* is irrelevant. NOTHING is idiot-proof.
>=Give an idiot a rubber ball, and they'll find some way to hurt themselves.
>
>Give somebody a reactor with a positive thermal coefficient and NO containment,
>and he can easily blow up the plant and spew radionuclides all over the
>landscape.
>
>Give someone a reactor with a negative thermal coefficient and several levels
>of containment, and even let him do everything in his power to screw things up
>(a more or less valid description of the operators at TMI) and he'll still find
>it quite difficult to do more than damage the reactor.

Do you really have an engineering degree?

>=Provide all the safeguards you'd ever want on a nuclear reactor, but they'll
>=eventually wear out, rust, be disconnected, wired wrong, and become generally
>=disfunctional. Hell, bury it 5 miles underground if you like... but following
>=good ole Murphy's Law, the meltdown gases will find their way up through the
>=elevator shaft.  Hey, make it even *impossible* to have a meltdown...
>
>Haven't heard about the more recent designs that are PASSIVELY safe, have you?
>You can't make one of them melt down even if you try (they did, as a test of
>the design).

If you do, your instructors neglected their duties.

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