"Nuclear Power Is Perfectly Safe"

[kpete]

Fox News' Bill Hemmer Introduces the New Fox Theme: Nukes Are Safe. Really. They are.
http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/fox-news-bill-hemmer-introduces-new-fox-the

[old mark]

1. K&R- Well, maybe not PERFECTLY....nt

[skepticscott]

2. Anybody who believes that ANYTHING is "perfectly safe" is an idiot

Whether Fox News or anybody else says it or not. Like everything in life, it is a matter of weighing risks and benefits, not seeking absolute, guaranteed, 100% safety. No such thing exists, and expecting it is foolish and ultimately destructive.

[rdking647]

3. quake,tsunami

a 9.0 earthquake. a tsunami. and still no lethal radiation leak.

seems to be relatively safe to me...
imagine if instead of a nuke plant being heat it was an LNG tanker in port that exploded. what would the damage be then.

the FACT remains nothing is 100% safe. Its a matter of relative safety. and given the western worlds record with nuclear power its a pretty damn good record.

[Tx4obama]

4. No it is not safe ...

6:35am

Japan's nuclear safety committee say radiation levels of 400 millisieverts an hour had been recorded near
Fukushima's No.4 reactor earlier today.

Exposure to over 100 millisieverts a year is a level which can lead to cancer, says to the World Nuclear Association.

http://blogs.aljazeera.net/live/asia/japans-nuclear-emergency-live-blog

[rdking647]

5. and yet

in ramsar Iran the natural background radiation is 260 millisieverts a year
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation


and nothing is 100% safe.. the area around the plant has been evacuated so the number of people exposed to such high levels or radiation are minimal.

[Tx4obama]

6. You're NOT going to get much pro-nuke support around here.

[Kennah]

7. Dams Aren't Perfectly Safe

I frequently hear nuclear proponents raise the issue of dam deaths, and the ecologic impact of dams cannot be ignored. The Johnstown Flood and South Fork Dam collapse, the worst in U.S. history, claimed more than 2,200 lives in 1889.

Dams still do collapse and claim lives, but not so much in recent years here in the U.S.

Without question we have infrastructure issues here in the U.S. that if left unchecked will lead to even more dam collapses and more dam deaths.

Levies in and around New Orleans pounded by Hurricane Katrina failed and claimed lives--but levies aren't a source of power generation so I tend to think that's in a different category.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure#List_of_major_dam_failures
http://www.damsafety.org/media/Documents/PRESS/US_FailuresIncidents.pdf

Somehow solar, wind, tide, wave, and even hydro power "catastrophic events" don't seem to rise to the level of regional extermination mechanisms.

[RegieRocker]

8. illogical. Damns when they break don't leave the area

uninhabitable for many years.

[Kennah]

9. Why illogical?

You're simply pointing out one more factor in the calculus of our energy policy.

Perhaps the question we have to ask is this:
What's the full effect, economically and to life, of a catastrophic event?

[RegieRocker]

10. Loss of life and habitability is top priority. It trumps everything

else.

[Kennah]

11. Immediate and long term effects must be considered. Yep.

[divvy]

12. safety is always relative

the "third generation" PWRs, as exemplified by the Westinghouse AP1400 and the Areva EPR, are "passively safe" in the sense that they can survive a design basis accident (a double-ended shear of the reactor coolant piping, resulting in instant depressurization) without fuel failure or release of any fission products, WITHOUT any electrically- or mechanically-operated equipment or any operator intervention. In other words, a total loss of AC power and no operator action. It basically relies upon reserve cooling water, natural circulation, and some flywheel-driven pumps (in the first few seconds).

bwr's (boiling water reactors) are a different design. Chernobyl did not even have secondary containment

[GSLevel9]

13. Let's take a look in 6 months then judge. nt