On Sat, Mar 9, 2019 at 10:26 PM Gene Heskett <ghesk...@shentel.net> wrote:
> Leave it to humans with no concept of common sense, but lots of don't > rock the boat > rules and you get TMI, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. And probably 100 more > lessor 'accidents' we haven't been told about. > Gene, this is just not the case. There's no way that 'lesser nuclear accidents' are covered up, unless you include people falling off ladders and such. Accidents with release of radioactivity are super easy to detect, and so rather hard to cover up. Plus, one serious coal mine disaster (e.g. our 2010 Upper Big Branch Mine, 29 deaths) has about similar number of fatalities as all these nuclear disasters (the official counts are TMI = 0, Chernobyl = 31, Fukushima = 0). There are good reasons why coal mining has a reputation of one of the most dangerous jobs there are. Read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_accident and weep. Of course on top of direct accident deaths due to nuclear industry accidents there's mortality due to long-term radiation effects, but if you count those, it's only fair to count black lung deaths among miners as well, and all the deaths due to smog pollution. You have a point that lots of rules limit progress in nuclear industry, but these rules do have an impressive track record for safety. We don't put new cheaper parts on airplanes, either, and for a good reason. This reminds me that I once met some guys that watch FAA advisories and figure out what spare parts they cover, then buy all available supply of these parts. The sheer evil genius of their business plan left me speechless---leave it to the free market forces to find a way to profit; but if the alternative is to do away with FAA regulations, I am OK with the speculators. _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
