Why are sailors comfortable aboard a nuclear ship, and we make

[napi21]

so much of a fuss over nuclear power plants? I admit, this was a question generated in my brain because os some talk o KGO radio and a nut called Dr. Bill, but it's a ligitmate question.

My son was stationed on the Nimitz for 14 years, and there was never a question about what powered the boat of any danger from it.

Now, I understand this Dr. Bill is a promoter of nuclear power, but why7 do we worry about it in some areas and not others?

[AndyTiedye]

1. Would They Have Been Permitted To Question Any Of That?

I didn't think so.

[BlooInBloo]

2. Because the nuclear ship doesn't have to deal with the waste?

Whereas cities or states do?

Dunno - that's one of the best 2 guesses I got.

[Trajan]

3. Well ... because they ARE concerned about it ....

You bet they are ....

I know a couple of submariners from my work, and they were well aware of what could happen, and how they would be up the proverbial shit creek if that power plant 'went south' ....

Consider it a dark acceptance of catastrophic possibility .... an acceptance that WE as citizens neednt brook ....

They know .... we cannot say they do not question it .... They just dont do it openly ....

[driver8]

7. Submariners are a very tight lipped group, for obvious reasons.

They never reveal what their boat is up to or what she is capable of.

[Submariner]

8. We could tell you how we feel

But then we would have to kill you :evilgrin:. Actually, Navy crew persons are told STFU and get back to work know matter what the question asked may be.

[izzie]

10. I knew sub sailors and the air really got to them when they

came in and way from the subs. The air is very clean and safe, power plants are run by private companies and they do not have to go by or do not go by, the laws that the sailors and navy does. Builders are in between. This is what I got from be married to some one who worked in the safety part of all three of those places. He never got any bad marks on his badge until he worked at a ship yard. The power plant dumped water into the local lake where we all liked to go to. Much goes back to Rickover as he was a real nut about this part of the Navy.

[charlie]

4. Maybe

because maintenance of the reactors is in the hands of the military and not the private sector? The military can FUBAR pretty good, but they're gods of efficiency compared to the likes of Bechtel. Bechtel installed a reactor in California backwards, so that the seismic braces will now augment rather than dampen movement from an earthquake. Bechtel "reclassified" modifications to the 3 Mile Island plant so as to avoid safety controls. That's just two from their mile-long list of fuckups and cost overruns (and they're currently at it in Baghdad, responsible for infrastructure restoration among other things, which is why we have hemmorhaging budgets and Iraqis have no dependable water or sewage):

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=72765
http://www.warprofiteers.com/article.php?id=6669

[bananas]

5. Do you really want to live in a military dictatorship?

Why are sailors so comfortable with the UCMJ, and we make so much of a fuss over the Bill of RIghts?

Why are sailors so comfortable sleeping in cramped bunk beds for six months at a time, and we make so much of a fuss over Pillow-top mattresses?

Why are sailors so comfortable handling nuclear weapons, and we make so much of a fuss over box-cutters and automatic weapons?

[driver8]

6. I went through the Naval Nuclear Power Program and served onboard

a nuclear carrier -- The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The men (and women) who operate these plants definitely know what could happen to them should some sort of accident happen. We are trained to question everything we do not understand, and spend much of our time at sea running drills for almost any type of accident you could think of. Not only that, but the nuclear operators are tested every year in what is called an "Operations and Reactor Safety Exam" (or ORSE), which is roughly a four day exam in which the ship and crew are put through the paces to see if they operate safely.

We are also taught and understand exposure limits and safety, and we know how much shielding and protection a navy plant has.

The man who developed the program, Admiral Hyman Rickover, left nothing to chance. There is fail-safe after fail-safe on these plants to minimize damage from any kind of problem. The program we went through was very rigorous -- no multiple choice questions anywhere in this program. Every question on every exam required a written answer or needed to be solved. Following the classroom phase (six months), we go to an actual working power plant for more training. In six months, we qualify on the particular plant and have to pass a written exam and an oral board that covers everything we have learned. Once you qualify as a studen, you go to the fleet and start the process of qualifying all over again.

The Navy has an amazing safety record when it comes to nuclear power. Believe me, the men are well aware of the danger involved and will question their safety in a heartbeat if they think something is wrong.

[The Stranger]

13. That program does sound rigorous, with fail-safe after fail-safe.

And after reading how convincing it was, now I am really scared.

[driver8]

14. How convincing? You lost me... n/t

[originalpckelly]

9. I worry deeply about military vessels with nuclear power...

Let me get this right,

we put nuclear reactors on vessels that as a part of their design get shot at, and some even destroyed. Makes sense to me.

[greenman3610]

11. several reasons

the power reactors in service in the US are, most of them,
light water reactors modeled after the old US navy design.

Basically they scaled the smaller Navy nuke designs up to mammoth
size. It's been said this is like scaling a Wright brothers plane up to
747 size and expecting it to operate the same way.
Indeed, the extremes of pressure and temperature in civilian
reactors have brought about problems unsuspected from the
military experience. for example, in the seventies, utilities began to experience
an unpredicted buildup of "green grunge" - mineral deposits caused by
extreme conditions plus radioactivity - inside power
plant piping, that cut efficiency.
Also, due to the scale of the plants, maintainence jobs that are
"simple" on a ship became huge headaches. One scheduled
repair, I believe at Indian Point, used every available welder in the
New York area, because- each welder could only go in and weld for
15 seconds or so before receiving his yearly allotment of
radioactivity!!

But the biggest implication of nuclear power as a standard for
power generation is the spread of nuclear technology to
every nation.
If we, meaning, the GOP, is willing to start WWIII when
a country we don't approve of starts a nuclear program,
one has to ask if this is a road we should continue down.

[WinkyDink]

12. Because I live 80 miles from Three-Mile Island?

And was told to get ready to evacuate?

How about Chernobyl?

[Toots]

15. Where does that ship dump it's waste?

Nuclear waste is the issue. It last for a long time and has to go somewhere.

[sarge43]

17. Nevada, along with the waste from aging nuke warheads, etc n/t

[sarge43]

16. I wouldn't say they were comfortable; rather they are resigned.

There's nothing like wearing a uniform to make you fatalistic. When VA or DoD releases the stats on the cancer rate among vet submariners, then possibly we have some facts to work with. However, don't hold your hindquarters waiting on them.