I'm watching a former NRC Commissioner on CNN right now

[RandySF]

And I am VERY disturbed at his demonstrated lack of knowledge of nuclear power plants. Did anyone else get the same feeling?

[Cleita]

1. Is he the one who is a lobbyist for the nuke industry?

If so he has to spin even if he does know his stuff.

[truedelphi]

2. If I had caught it, I'd probably be scratching my head trying to

Figure out if the guy is out and out stupid, or just playing it like he is.

During times like these, I astutely avoid CNN's talking heads. I like the site "Russia Today" and "the Real News" but the CNN people and those they interview are just so much dis-information.

[TheWraith]

3. What did he say that made you feel he didn't understand? nt

[robdogbucky]

4. I thought Gilinsky was pretty doomsday actually

If he is a shill for the industry he flunked PR 101 with his answers. He admits we don't know what's going on and that it may be overwhelming the 50 that remain trying to do the job of the hundreds of nuke engineers/workers that were evacuated out. His statement describing that if one of those containment vessels breaches and there is a core meltdown, it goes down through the concrete containment beneath the plant and then it is just mother earth in that direction. He almost laughed when asked if the design of the plant could handle this crisis, and said of course it wasn't designed for this and no one knows what it will do.

His commment that TMI was actually made really bad when one of the operators mistakenly turned off the cooling water altogether, but that it was only water boiling off/fuel rods melting down for a couple of hours before they recognized it and took steps. Here, the first reported incident that was at all like that (possible partial meltdown at least) was last Saturday. In other words, TMI was mainly human error and this incident is already way worse than TMI.

On the question of why there was not more protection for the spent fuel rods, which he agreed with the other expert, Walsh from MIT, that it was thought the 20 feet of water that was to always be on top of those spent rods were considered enough safety and apparently no one thought this could happen.

How stupid, we relied on the imaginations of engineers, who obviously did not take into consideration that where they have put this complex, it was opined that the Japanese were forced to put so many reactors in so small a complex was due to community objections to put them anywhere else. In other words, part of the conditions that makes this situation more dicey was due to people not wanting plants in their towns. Ironic no?

And apparently no one thought to ask, have we thought of everything that could happen if we crowd 6 reactors into 2 cramped plants next to each other, built on the beach of the ocean in a very active earthquake area.

We left the imagination part of designing this to engineers?